bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Application of modern geotechnologies for protection of territories against rockfall processes
Authors: Мариничев Максим , Marinichev Maksim , Макушева Анна , Makusheva Anna
Published: February 2016

An overview of traditional and modern engineering systems used rockfall protection is given. The main parameters which are considered in the study of stone-fall processes and in the designing of structures against rockfall are analyzed. Features of the calculation and the global experience of using flexible rockfall barriers are described.

Keywords: rockfall, structures against rockfall, flexible rockfall protection barriers, trajectory of rockfall, impact energy of rock
From confrontation to cooperation – institutional support in building cooperation of Polish enterprises
Authors: Bednarz Joanna Bednarz, , Markiewicz Magdalena Markiewicz
Published: February 2016

The article presents results of critical theoretical and empirical analysis of cooperation between Polish enterprises based on two models: made by T. Ozawa and M.E. Porter, and followed by market research concerning opportunities to support cooperation of Polish enterprises. Polish companies seem to opt for confrontation as the main market strategy, basing on the development of one company while worsening the position of rivals at the same time. The aim of this paper is to show possibilities in supporting Polish companies to build their capabilities, as well as identifying barriers, in transition from confrontation to cooperation. The article is divided into four parts. In the first part, the stages of development of economy and enterprises in Europe are defined with reference to T. Ozawa model. The analysis covers the internationally recognised innovation indicators with regard to cooperation aspects. In the second part, the authors analyse the essence and forms of cooperation between companies. The third part of the paper concentrates on the market research of the support means available for Polish enterprises. In conclusion, a brief summary of the main findings was given, concerning the opportunities and barriers of institutional approach towards cooperation between Polish enterprises. In the paper, two types of research methods were used: methods of data collection and methods of organizing and processing information, especially methods of systems, cause and logical analysis of institutional support.
Features of Polish companies. Results of the company competitiveness barometer 2014
Authors: Flak Olaf , Głód Grzegorz
Published: February 2016

In the paper there are results of the research on competitiveness of Polish companies which was conducted within the Company Competitiveness Barometer in 2014. The paper includes a short description of the integrated company competitiveness model, their integral elements and methodology of the research. Then there are results of a competitive potential, a strategy of competition, a competitive advantage, a competitive position of examined companies.  252 companies took part in the Company Competitiveness Barometer 2014. Answers to the survey placed on www.konkurencyjniprzetrwaja.pl allow to get knowledge about a sample of Polish companies in different sectors of economy. The data was also a foundation to verify some theoretical assumptions of the relations between the elements of competitiveness.
The use of the Delphi method as a tool determining management of contemporary economic organisations
Authors: Gajda Waldemar
Published: February 2016

This article contains a model of a practical conduction of empirical research with the use of the Delphi method deriving from the group of inventive methods. Research material includes tools which directly determine management and operation of contemporary economic organisations. Identification of strategic spheres of operation of business entities was the starting point for the determination of research material. The five most important spheres were selected for this article and then described. The identification of the most important tools determining operation of each of them was made on the basis of the selected strategic spheres.  As a result, identification and systematisation of economic and financial and organisational tools in the exogenic and endogenic aspect, determining the operation and development of modern economic entities was made. Subsequently, methodological guidelines were developed and practical use of the Delphi method concerning the research of identified economic and financial as well as organisational tools was presented.
Laser tattoo removal: the importance of preparing the skin before treatment
Authors: Di-Scala Naomi
Published: February 2016

With the rise in popularity of tattoos in the UK, there is also a corresponding increase in the numbers of those seeking different methods to remove their unwanted artwork. Naomi Di-Scala, claims team leader at Hamilton Fraser Cosmetic Insurance, explores the different risks associated with laser tattoo removal and gives aesthetic practitioners advice on avoiding these in clinical practice
Social triggers and patterns of behaviour: what do they say about aesthetic patients?
Authors: Ratcliffe Jason
Published: February 2016

All humans have basic instincts and triggers which influence their decisions to invest in people, products and services. The ways in which clients make decisions can impact on their choice to book an appointment with your clinic. Jason Ratcliffe discusses psychological triggers that can be used to persuade clients into purchasing a service, and when they should—and shouldn't—be used
Re-evaluating local government amalgamations: utility maximisation meets the principle of double effect (PDE)
Authors: Drew Joseph , Grant Bligh , Fisher Josie
Published: February 2016

Public policy debates are often dominated by economic analysis of aggregate financial benefit. However, public policy formulated on this basis is frequently regarded as profoundly unsatisfactory by stakeholders. Focusing upon municipal amalgamation, this paper provides an alternative framework for public policy analysis which emphasises the importance of intent, process and uncertainty in decision making. We contend that an approach of this type better accommodates public opinion on contentious policy reform. Moreover, it reminds policy makers that even the most admirable economic outcome must still be achieved through a morally licit process.
Terapia Comunitária como intervenção na Saúde Mental
Authors: Giffoni Francinete Alves De Oliveira , Vieira Anny Caroline Costa , Matos Ana Bruna Macêdo , Barbosa Jailma Dos Santos
Published: February 2016

A saúde no Brasil tem passado por diversas mudanças, dentre elas, a aprovação de uma  Política Nacional que abrange Práticas Integrativas e Complementares (PNPIC), desde 2006 e, que dá subsídios para se estender a Terapia Comunitária como prática em saúde. Esta modalidade já acontece há bem mais de vinte anos em Fortaleza e, em outras regiões do país. A Terapia Comunitária é uma forma de promoção da saúde orientada  para o cuidado emocional. Historicamente tem Início na comunidade do Pirambu em Fortaleza, estado do Ceará. Trata-se de um estudo de natureza descritiva, quantitativa e qualitativa. Participaram 26 pessoas em tratamento no Centro de Atenção Psicossocial - CAPS em Barbalha, estado do Ceará. Participantes da proposta de Terapia Comunitária, implantada enquanto proposta experimental neste Centro. As entrevistas foram realizadas nos momentos dos encontros.  O instrumento constou de um questionário, que foi aplicado individualmente.   Os resultados demonstraram o seguinte: Quanto as concepções de Terapia Comunitária, uma categoria: Positiva, com três subcategorias: Bem estar, Encontro social e Mudança. Quanto a percepção das principais mudanças proporcionadas através das sessões  de Terapia comunitária, duas categorias sobressaíram-se: Melhoria no estado mental e Melhoria nas atitudes. Finalmente, quanto a percepção dos motivos para continuar participando das sessões de Terapia comunitária, duas categorias foram eliciadas: Melhorar a saúde e relacionamentos saudáveis. Conforme verificado, ao participar das sessões de Terapia Comunitária, os entrevistados parecem perceber a importância da mudança da própria atitude no seu processo de cura. Portanto, participar da Terapia Comunitária produziu uma ruptura no cotidiano dos participantes, que relataram a ocorrência de mudanças em suas vidas durante esse período, abrangendo mudanças no estado emocional e mudanças de atitude nas relações familiares, conjugais, amorosas e sociais. 
The effect of managerial overconfidence on investment
Authors: Dashtbayaz Mahmoud Lari , Mohammadi Shaban
Published: February 2016

Overconfidence or experience-based learning theory in behavioral finance is a subsidiary of confidence. One of the most detrimental behavioral biases in the field of behavioral finance is that investors will manifest as a lack of understanding of the risk of capital loss, the transaction or the transaction repeatedly to find a hot stock and widely traded futures and having a non-diversified portfolio, all serious risks for the enterprise you are looking for. One of the implications of each common biases of overconfidence, lack of foresight is real. Therefore, it is necessary to protect investors against overconfidence and financial advisors to help them in this regard. Overconfidence leads investors to predict their skills over estimate and find the belief that they cannot market timing. Detection and mitigation of confidence too, is a fundamental step in designing the foundations of a good financial plan. Too much trust in their own people, the strongest findings in the psychology of judgment. In this paper, the risks of overconfidence management and examine its impact on investor portfolios.
The effect of managerial overconfidence on investment
Notes from the Editors, February 2016
Authors: The Editors -
Published: February 2016

buy this issue
From mainstream news reports, one might easily conclude that the Paris climate agreement, presented to the world on December 12, 2015, was a complete triumph. The Guardian headlined it as "The World's Greatest Diplomatic Success." However, by any meaningful criteria, the Paris climate change agreement was fraudulent, based on a fabric of illusion. Moreover, the distorted media coverage of the climate deal, presenting it as a historical agreement virtually without shortcomings, was made possible in large part by the French government's banning of the mass climate protests, following the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. With radical protestors silenced and their demands marginalized, the global power elite could make virtually any public claims it wished, without acknowledging any other public voice or alternative view.

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Walking in the cloud
Authors: Li Zhenguo , Fang Yixiang , Liu Qin , Cheng Jiefeng , Cheng Reynold , Lui John C. S.
Published: February 2016

Despite its popularity, SimRank is computationally costly, in both time and space. In particular, its recursive nature poses a great challenge in using modern distributed computing power, and also prevents querying similarities individually. Existing solutions suffer greatly from these practical issues. In this paper, we break such dependency for maximum efficiency possible. Our method consists of offline and online phases. In offline phase, a length-
n
indexing vector is derived by solving a linear system in parallel. At online query time, the similarities are computed instantly from the index vector. Throughout, the Monte Carlo method is used to maximally reduce time and space. Our algorithm, called CloudWalker, is highly parallelizable, with only linear time and space. Remarkably, it responses to both single-pair and single-source queries in constant time. CloudWalker is orders of magnitude more efficient and scalable than existing solutions for large-scale problems. Implemented on Spark with 10 machines and tested on the web-scale clue-web graph with 1 billion nodes and 43 billion edges, it takes 110 hours for offline indexing, 64 seconds for a single-pair query, and 188 seconds for a single-source query. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to report results on clue-web, which is 10x larger than the largest graph ever reported for SimRank computation.
From competition to complementarity
Authors: Lu Wei , Chen Wei , Lakshmanan Laks V. S.
Published: February 2016

Influence maximization is a well-studied problem that asks for a small set of influential users from a social network, such that by targeting them as early adopters, the expected total adoption through influence cascades over the network is maximized. However, almost all prior work focuses on cascades of a single propagating entity or purely-competitive entities. In this work, we propose the
Comparative Independent Cascade
(Com-IC) model that covers the full spectrum of entity interactions from competition to complementarity. In Com-IC, users' adoption decisions depend not only on edge-level information propagation, but also on a node-level automaton whose behavior is governed by a set of model parameters, enabling our model to capture not only competition, but also complementarity, to
any possible degree.
We study two natural optimization problems,
Self Influence Maximization
and
Complementary Influence Maximization
, in a novel setting with complementary entities. Both problems are NP-hard, and we devise efficient and effective approximation algorithms via non-trivial techniques based on reverse-reachable sets and a novel "sandwich approximation" strategy. The applicability of both techniques extends beyond our model and problems. Our experiments show that the proposed algorithms consistently outperform intuitive baselines on four real-world social networks, often by a significant margin. In addition, we learn model parameters from real user action logs.
Pixida
Authors: Kloudas Konstantinos , Mamede Margarida , Preguiça Nuno , Rodrigues Rodrigo
Published: February 2016

In the era of global-scale services, big data analytical queries are often required to process datasets that span multiple data centers (DCs). In this setting, cross-DC bandwidth is often the scarcest, most volatile, and/or most expensive resource. However, current widely deployed big data analytics frameworks make no attempt to minimize the traffic traversing these links.

In this paper, we present P
ixida
, a scheduler that aims to minimize data movement across resource constrained links. To achieve this, we introduce a new abstraction called S
ilo
, which is key to modeling P
ixida
's scheduling goals as a graph partitioning problem. Furthermore, we show that existing graph partitioning problem formulations do not map to how big data jobs work, causing their solutions to miss opportunities for avoiding data movement. To address this, we formulate a new graph partitioning problem and propose a novel algorithm to solve it. We integrated P
ixida
in Spark and our experiments show that, when compared to existing schedulers, P
ixida
achieves a significant traffic reduction of up to ~ 9x on the aforementioned links.
Neighbor-sensitive hashing
Authors: Park Yongjoo , Cafarella Michael , Mozafari Barzan
Published: February 2016

Approximate
k
NN (
k
-nearest neighbor) techniques using binary hash functions are among the most commonly used approaches for overcoming the prohibitive cost of performing exact
k
NN queries. However, the success of these techniques largely depends on their hash functions' ability to distinguish
k
NN items; that is, the
k
NN items retrieved based on data items'
hashcodes
, should include as many
true k
NN items as possible. A widely-adopted principle for this process is to ensure that similar items are assigned to the same hashcode so that the items with the hashcodes similar to a query's hashcode are likely to be true neighbors.

In this work, we abandon this heavily-utilized principle and pursue the opposite direction for generating more effective hash functions for
k
NN tasks. That is, we aim to
increase
the distance between similar items in the hashcode space, instead of reducing it. Our contribution begins by providing theoretical analysis on why this revolutionary and seemingly counter-intuitive approach leads to a more accurate identification of
k
NN items. Our analysis is followed by a proposal for a hashing algorithm that embeds this novel principle. Our empirical studies confirm that a hashing algorithm based on this counter-intuitive idea significantly improves the efficiency and accuracy of state-of-the-art techniques.
Cümülön
Authors: Huang Botong , Jarrett Nicholas W. D. , Babu Shivnath , Mukherjee Sayan , Yang Jun
Published: February 2016

We describe Cümülön, a system aimed at helping users develop and deploy matrix-based data analysis programs in a public cloud. A key feature of Cümülön is its end-to-end support for the so-called
spot instances
---machines whose market price fluctuates over time but is usually much lower than the regular fixed price. A user sets a bid price when acquiring spot instances, and loses them as soon as the market price exceeds the bid price. While spot instances can potentially save cost, they are difficult to use effectively, and run the risk of not finishing work while costing more. Cümülön provides a highly elastic computation and storage engine on top of spot instances, and offers automatic cost-based optimization of execution, deployment, and bidding strategies. Cümülön further quantifies how the uncertainty in the market price translates into the cost uncertainty of its recommendations, and allows users to specify their risk tolerance as an optimization constraint.
Titian
Authors: Interlandi Matteo , Shah Kshitij , Tetali Sai Deep , Gulzar Muhammad Ali , Yoo Seunghyun , Kim Miryung , Millstein Todd , Condie Tyson
Published: February 2016

Debugging data processing logic in Data-Intensive Scalable Computing (DISC) systems is a difficult and time consuming effort. Today's DISC systems offer very little tooling for debugging programs, and as a result programmers spend countless hours collecting evidence (
e.g.
, from log files) and performing trial and error debugging. To aid this effort, we built
Titian
, a library that enables
data provenance
---tracking data through transformations---in Apache Spark. Data scientists using the Titian Spark extension will be able to quickly identify the input data at the root cause of a potential bug or outlier result. Titian is built directly into the Spark platform and offers data provenance support at interactive speeds---orders-of-magnitude faster than alternative solutions---while minimally impacting Spark job performance; observed overheads for capturing data lineage rarely exceed 30% above the baseline job execution time.
Asynchronous memory access chaining
Authors: Kocberber Onur , Falsafi Babak , Grot Boris
Published: February 2016

In-memory databases rely on pointer-intensive data structures to quickly locate data in memory. A single lookup operation in such data structures often exhibits long-latency memory stalls due to dependent pointer dereferences. Hiding the memory latency by launching additional memory accesses for other lookups is an effective way of improving performance of pointer-chasing codes (e.g., hash table probes, tree traversals). The ability to exploit such inter-lookup parallelism is beyond the reach of modern out-of-order cores due to the limited size of their instruction window. Instead, recent work has proposed software prefetching techniques that exploit inter-lookup parallelism by arranging a set of independent lookups into a group or a pipeline, and navigate their respective pointer chains in a synchronized fashion. While these techniques work well for highly regular access patterns, they break down in the face of irregularity across lookups. Such irregularity includes variable-length pointer chains, early exit, and read/write dependencies.

This work introduces Asynchronous Memory Access Chaining (AMAC), a new approach for exploiting inter-lookup parallelism to hide the memory access latency. AMAC achieves high dynamism in dealing with irregularity across lookups by maintaining the state of each lookup separately from that of other lookups. This feature enables AMAC to initiate a new lookup as soon as any of the in-flight lookups complete. In contrast, the static arrangement of lookups into a group or pipeline in existing techniques precludes such adaptivity. Our results show that AMAC matches or outperforms state-of-the-art prefetching techniques on regular access patterns, while delivering up to 2.3x higher performance under irregular data structure lookups. AMAC fully utilizes the available microarchitectural resources, generating the maximum number of memory accesses allowed by hardware in both single- and multi-threaded execution modes.
Design of policy-aware differentially private algorithms
Authors: Haney Samuel , Machanavajjhala Ashwin , Ding Bolin
Published: February 2016

The problem of designing error optimal differentially private algorithms is well studied. Recent work applying differential privacy to real world settings have used variants of differential privacy that appropriately modify the notion of neighboring databases. The problem of designing error optimal algorithms for such variants of differential privacy is open. In this paper, we show a novel transformational equivalence result that can turn the problem of query answering under differential privacy with a modified notion of neighbors to one of query answering under standard differential privacy, for a large class of neighbor definitions.

We utilize the Blowfish privacy framework that generalizes differential privacy. Blowfish uses a
policy graph
to instantiate different notions of neighboring databases. We show that the error incurred when answering a workload
W
on a database
x
under a Blowfish policy graph
G
is identical to the error required to answer a transformed workload
f

G

(
W
) on database
g

G

(
x
) under standard differential privacy, where
f

G

and
g

G

are linear transformations based on
G.
Using this result, we develop error efficient algorithms for releasing histograms and multidimensional range queries under different Blowfish policies. We believe the tools we develop will be useful for finding mechanisms to answer many other classes of queries with low error under other policy graphs.
Schema-agnostic vs schema-based configurations for blocking methods on homogeneous data
Authors: Papadakis George , Alexiou George , Papastefanatos George , Koutrika Georgia
Published: February 2016

Entity Resolution constitutes a core task for data integration that, due to its quadratic complexity, typically scales to large datasets through blocking methods. These can be configured in two ways. The schema-based configuration relies on schema information in order to select signatures of high distinctiveness and low noise, while the schema-agnostic one treats every token from all attribute values as a signature. The latter approach has significant potential, as it requires no fine-tuning by human experts and it applies to heterogeneous data. Yet, there is no systematic study on its relative performance with respect to the schema-based configuration. This work covers this gap by comparing analytically the two configurations in terms of effectiveness, time efficiency and scalability. We apply them to 9 established blocking methods and to 11 benchmarks of structured data. We provide valuable insights into the internal functionality of the blocking methods with the help of a novel taxonomy. Our studies reveal that the schema-agnostic configuration offers unsupervised and robust definition of blocking keys under versatile settings, trading a higher computational cost for a consistently higher recall than the schema-based one. It also enables the use of state-of-the-art blocking methods without schema knowledge.
Ego-net community mining applied to friend suggestion
Authors: Epasto Alessandro , Lattanzi Silvio , Mirrokni Vahab , Sebe Ismail Oner , Taei Ahmed , Verma Sunita
Published: February 2016

In this paper, we present a study of the community structure of ego-networks---the graphs representing the connections among the neighbors of a node---for several online social networks. Toward this goal, we design a new technique to efficiently build and cluster all the ego-nets of a graph in parallel (note that even just building the ego-nets efficiently is challenging on large networks). Our experimental findings are quite compelling: at a microscopic level it is easy to detect high quality communities.

Leveraging on this fact we, then, develop new features for friend suggestion based on co-occurrences of two nodes in different ego-nets' communities. Our new features can be computed efficiently on very large scale graphs by just analyzing the neighborhood of each node. Furthermore, we prove formally on a stylized model, and by experimental analysis that this new similarity measure outperforms the classic local features employed for friend suggestions.
Temporal rules discovery for web data cleaning
Authors: Abedjan Ziawasch , Akcora Cuneyt G. , Ouzzani Mourad , Papotti Paolo , Stonebraker Michael
Published: February 2016

Declarative rules, such as functional dependencies, are widely used for cleaning data. Several systems take them as input for detecting errors and computing a "clean" version of the data. To support domain experts, in specifying these rules, several tools have been proposed to profile the data and mine rules. However, existing discovery techniques have traditionally ignored the time dimension. Recurrent events, such as persons reported in locations, have a duration in which they are valid, and this duration should be part of the rules or the cleaning process would simply fail.

In this work, we study the rule discovery problem for temporal web data. Such a discovery process is challenging because of the nature of web data; extracted facts are (i) sparse over time, (ii) reported with delays, and (iii) often reported with errors over the values because of inaccurate sources or non robust extractors. We handle these challenges with a new discovery approach that is more robust to noise. Our solution uses machine learning methods, such as association measures and outlier detection, for the discovery of the rules, together with an aggressive repair of the data in the mining step itself. Our experimental evaluation over real-world data from Recorded Future, an intelligence company that monitors over 700K Web sources, shows that temporal rules improve the quality of the data with an increase of the average precision in the cleaning process from 0.37 to 0.84, and a 40% relative increase in the average F-measure.
Escolha do modelo de turbulência para um leito fluidizado
Authors: Sant'Anna Mikele Cândida Sousa de , Sarmento Sandra Maria , Silva Gabriel Francisco da , Medronho Ricardo De Andrade , Lucena Sergio
Published: February 2016

O leito fluidizado proporciona um excelente contato gás-sólido e elevadas taxas de transferência de calor e massa. A fim de otimizar os processos nas últimas décadas, intensificaram-se o uso de técnicas computacionais como a Fluidodinâmica Computacional, CFD, que resolve as equações de conservação através da discretização, no método dos volumes finitos. Nas simulações foram utilizadas o pacote comercial ANSYS FLUENT 15.0 e sistema de simulação contendo ar e areia. O teste de Modelo foi realizado para identificar o modelo de turbulência mais adequado para as simulações (k-ε ou SST). A geometria foi construída em 2D e foi realizado um teste de malha, para verificar se a malha influenciava nos resultados. A interação entre as fases foi determinada pela equação Syamlal-O'Brien e o valor do coeficiente de restituição partícula-partícula de 0,9. A viscosidade das partículas foi calculada pela Teoria Cinética Granular. A velocidade de entrada do ar foi de 0,38 ms-1. Através da análise de expansão do leito e da queda de pressão optou-se por utilizar o Modelo k-ε nas simulações seguintes, porque apresentou resultados concordantes com menor esforço computacional, em comparação com o modelo k-ω. A malha três foi escolhida.
Effect Of Organic Selenium And Iodine Supplementation On Selenium And Thyroid Hormones Status Of Lactating Ewes And Lambs
Authors: Konečný Roman , Hasoňová Lucie , Trávníček Jan , Samková Eva , Hladký Jan , Křížová Zuzana
Published: February 2016

The aim of this research was to determine the influence of 56-days (from day 4 to day 60 post partum) of simultaneous supplementation of selenium (Se) and iodine (I) enriched Chlorella algae on blood and urine Se concentrations and thyroid hormone levels in ewes and lambs. The study included 18 Šumava sheep ewes and their lambs divided into three groups (CON, HSe, HSeI). Selenium and I content in the diet of ewes measured 0.2 and 0.7 mg (CON), 0.4 and 0.7 mg (HSe), 0.4 and 1.3 mg (HSeI) per kg of dry matter. During the experimental period a significantly higher blood serum Se concentration was determined in ewes of the HSeI group (P< 0.001) and urine (P< 0.01). A significantly higher (P< 0.001) blood serum Se concentration was found also in lambs of the HSeI group. The highest Se concentration in the blood serum was recorded in ewes (128.0 μg/L) and lambs (74.2 μg/L) on the 26th day of the experiment. The results demonstrate a higher utilization of Se administered in the organic form accompanied by a higher intake of I applied also in the organic form. Plasma thyroid hormone levels in ewes were not explicitly affected by higher Se and I supplementation. A higher Se concentration in the lambs’ blood serum led to significantly higher (P< 0.05) T3 levels up to 30 days post birth.
Investigations On The Resistance Of Porcine Commensal E. Coli Isolates To Beta Lactams
Authors: Urumova Valentina
Published: February 2016

The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence of antibiotic resistance to beta-lactams and to evaluate two resistance genes bla
TEM and bla
OXA-1 in Escherichia coli isolates from faeces on six swine farms in the Republic of Bulgaria. A total of 186 E. coli isolates from 192 faecal swabs were tested by the disk diffusion method to determine resistance patterns to 11 antimicrobial agents. Resistance to beta-lactams was determined by disk diffusion method, E-test, micro-broth dilution method and PCR. About 40.3% of the E. coli isolates from swine were resistant to ampicillin. The highest resistance was observed in E.coli isolates from weaned pigs to ampicillin – 60.0% and to cephalotin – 45.5 %. The E. coli isolates resistant to beta-lactams were examined for the presence of bla
TEM and bla
OXA-1 genes. The most common bla gene identified was bla
TEM, which was found in 92.0% of swine isolates.
Priapism Following hCG Administration In A Cat
Authors: Quaranta Giuseppe , Rota Ada , Dogliero Andrea , Pecchia Flaviana
Published: February 2016

Priapism, defined as a persistent and painful penile erection in the absence of sexual excitation, is an uncommon disorder of cats that usually requires penile amputation and perineal urethrostomy. This report describes a case of priapism in a short-haired Persian male cat aged 3 years. The condition had appeared after attempted mating with a female at the end of oestrus and the time of referral to the authors was 10 days after onset. Previous treatment had consisted of corticosteroids and local lubricants. On physical examination, the cat appeared bright and alert; the penis was erect but the colour was normal; blood analysis excluded viral pathologies. The cat history revealed that he had been treated with 500 IU hCG i.m. because he had to mate with three queens in a short period of time. In consideration of the mild symptoms, conservative treatment was adopted. The condition resolved in about 40 days. This is the first report of priapism following hCG administration in a cat and indicates that the misuse of this gonadotropin might cause potentially harmful side effects.
Significance of Echocardiography in the Assessment of Left Ventricular Function in Patients Receiving Combined Adjuvant Treatment with Anthracyclines and Trastuzumab / Značaj ehokardiografije u proceni funkcije leve komore kod bolesnica na adjuvantnoj terapji (kombinovana terapija antraciklinima i trastuzumabom)
Authors: Krstić Ivana , Ilić Marina Deljanin , Vrbić Svetislav , Pejčić Ivica
Published: February 2016

The application of anthracycline and trastuzumab in adjuvant breast cancer treatment approach has significantly improved the survival of patients, but also carries the risk of cardiotoxicity that is manifested by reducing the ejection fraction of the heart.

The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of cumulative anthracycline dose in combination therapy with trastuzumab on the left ventricular ejection fraction, and the influence of the time interval for starting the treatment with trastuzumab.

The study included a group of 80 breast cancer patients (aged 28 to 75 years) who underwent the therapy with anthracyclines (IV-VI cycles) with the continuation of trastuzumab therapy for a period of one year. Ejection fraction at the end of completing the treatment period (VI anthracycline cycles and trastuzumab) was significantly lower in 68 (93%) patients compared to the value at the beginning of the study (68.2% ± 6.06 to 62.1 ± 6.1%; p <0.0001; difference 6.1%). In five patients (anthracyclines and trastuzumab IV cycles) a decrease of 7.1% EF; p = 0.0043 was registered compared to the baseline values. The reduction in the ejection fraction was highest in patients in whom the trastuzumab therapy was initiated one month after the last anthracycline therapy (7.33%), and lowest in the subgroup who started receiving the therapy after three months (5.31%).

In patients on cytostatic therapy, echocardiography proves the reduction in the left ventricular ejection fraction, which is cumulative and dose-dependent, and it also proves that the shorter time interval between the last cycle of anthracycline and the initial trastuzumab treatment the more it is associated with a marked decrease in the left ventricular ejection fraction.
Modeling And Parameter Identification Of Vibrations Of A Double Torsion Pendulum With Friction
Authors: Czerwiński Ernest , Olejnik Paweł , Awrejcewicz Jan
Published: February 2016

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a double torsion pendulum with planar frictional contact. The single torsion pendulum with one-degree-of-freedom is an angular equivalent of the linear harmonic oscillator. The second degree of freedom has been obtained by adding a free body to the inverted single torsion pendulum. The free body’s angular displacement is caused by frictional forces appearing in the interface (contact zone) between the free body and the pendulum column’s head kinematically excited at its base by a mechanism with torsion spiral spring. An experimental station has been set up and run to find most unknown parameters of the pendulum from the time series of state variables taken as inputs to the Nelder-Mead method of identification. The obtained results proved significant usability of the identification method in the case of numerical simulation of the pendulum’s dynamical model. It has not been satisfactorily proved in the case of time characteristics coming from a real system that exhibits also some unrecognized physical effects.
Minimum Energy Control Of Positive Time-Varying Linear Systems
Authors: Kaczorek Tadeusz
Published: February 2016

The minimum energy control problem for the positive time-varying linear systems is formulated and solved. Sufficient conditions for the existence of solution to the problem are established. A procedure for solving of the problem is proposed and illustrated by a numerical example.
Comparative Analysis For Kinematics Of 5-DOF Industrial Robotic Manipulator
Authors: Manjaree Shiv , Nakra Bahadur Chand , Agarwal Vijyant
Published: February 2016

This paper gives the kinematic analysis of a 5-DOF industrial robotic manipulator while considering wrist in motion. Analytical solutions have been obtained for forward kinematics and inverse kinematics to accurately position the end-effector of robotic manipulator in three dimensional spaces. For the first time, a hybrid neuro-fuzzy intelligent technique with two different membership functions has been studied and their performances are comparatively evaluated with analytical solutions. An experiment has been performed for a desired trajectory. It is seen that the results for the intelligent technique are reasonably in agreement with experiment. Also, the results obtained highlight the importance of selection of a particular membership function for robotic manipulators of industrial use.
Stress-Strain State Of Elastic Plate With An Arbitrary Smooth Notch
Authors: Kuz Ihor , Kuz Olga , Sulym Heorgij
Published: February 2016

The paper contains comparing calculations of the stress fields in an elastic plate with notch along the arc of a circle, ellipse or parabola obtained by analytic method based on complex Kolosov-Muskhelishvili potentials and by numerical variation-difference method. These fields differ by no more than 2%, which, in particular, indicates the reliability of such numerical implementation. This discrepancy can be explained by the fact that in the analytical solution domain is unbounded, while the numerical calculation was carried out, obviously, for a finite field. The given stresses at the top of the notch along the arc of an ellipse or a parabola significantly increase with increasing of the relative depth of the notch (while increasing its depth or decreasing width).
Koiter Asymptotic Analysis Of Thin-Walled Cold-Formed Steel Members
Authors: Ungureanu Viorel , Dubina Dan , Crisan Andrei , Madeo Antonio , Zagari Giuseppe , Zucco Giovanni , Zinno Raffaele
Published: February 2016

An imperfection sensitivity analysis of cold-formed steel members in compression is presented. The analysis is based on Koiter’s approach and Monte Carlo simulation. If the modes interaction is correctly accounted, than the limit load and the erosion of critical buckling load can be easily evaluated. Thousands of imperfection can be analysed with very low computational cost and an effective statistical evaluation of limit performance can be carried out. The analysis is done on pallet rack uprights in compression, based on an intensive experimental study carried out at the Politehnica University of Timisoara.
Local Damages During Rolling And Mechano-Rolling Fatigue For The Mechanical System Shaft – Roller (0.45 Carbon Steel – 25XGT Steel, 20XH3A Steel – 20XH3A Steel)
Authors: Bogdanovich Alexander , Yelovoy Oleg , Sosnovskiy Leonid , Komissarov Victor , Tyurin Sergey
Published: February 2016

The report provides a description of local damages which are formed in the process of wear-fatigue tests. The analysis of local surface wave-like damages during rolling and mechano-rolling fatigue for the shaft-roller mechanical system under steady-state and multi-stage loading conditions is given. It is shown that the study of local wear-fatigue damage was made possible by new methods of testing and measuring wear-fatigue tests and damages, which are described in the report. New characteristics to estimate the parameters of the local wear-fatigue damage are proposed. The concept of local fatigue curves is introduced. The laws of local wear-fatigue damage for the shaft - roller system are analysed.
Love of Variety and Immigration
Authors: Qirjo Dhimitri
Published: February 2016

This paper develops a political-economic analysis of immigration in a host country that operates in a direct democracy regime. It shows that, in a monopolistic competitive environment with differentiated capital intensive goods, labor liberalization is more likely to come about in the societies that have more taste for variety. Moreover, in a host country with a strong preference for variety, workers and capital owners may share the same positive stance toward labor liberalization. It follows that the latter is impossible in a perfect competitive environment. Finally, in a dynamic inter-temporal setting with strategic voters, it demonstrates that the median voter is willing to accept fewer immigrants in the first period, in order to preserve her domestic political influence in the next period because of the naturalization of immigrants. In this way, the median voter maximizes her gains from immigration by accepting more immigrants in total.
Head-to-head comparison of 10 natriuretic peptide assays
Authors: Collin-Chavagnac Delphine , Dehoux Monique , Schellenberg François , Cauliez Bruno , Maupas-Schwalm Françoise , Lefevre Guillaume , on behalf of the Société Française
Published: February 2016

The aim of the study was to compare NT-proBNP and BNP levels in fresh samples from heart failure (HF) patients measured using 10 immunoassays and to assess their agreement.

NT-proBNP (CobasH232

The Pearson correlation coefficient ranged between 0.929 (Triage

This study stresses the lack of transferability of the results obtained using different techniques to measure BNP and NT-proBNP levels in fresh samples. Individual reference ranges and HF diagnostic cut-offs should be assessed for each commercial NP immunoassay. We recommend to systematically monitoring HF patients using the same assay (BNP or NT-proBNP) over the time.
Cognitive Grammar and gesture: Points of convergence, advances and challenges
Authors: Kok Kasper I. , Cienki Alan
Published: February 2016

Given its usage-oriented character, Cognitive Grammar (CG) can be expected to be consonant with a multimodal, rather than text-only, perspective on language. Whereas several scholars have acknowledged this potential, the question as to how speakers’ gestures can be incorporated in CG-based grammatical analysis has not been conclusively addressed. In this paper, we aim to advance the CG-gesture relationship. We first elaborate on three important points of convergence between CG and gesture research: (1) CG’s conception of grammar as a prototype category, with central and more peripheral structures, aligns with the variable degrees to which speakers’ gestures are conventionalized in human communication. (2) Conceptualization, which lies at the basis of grammatical organization according to CG, is known to be of central importance for gestural expression. In fact, all of the main dimensions of construal postulated in CG (specificity, perspective, profile-base relationship, conceptual archetypes) receive potential gestural expression. (3) CG’s intensive use of diagrammatic notation allows for the incorporation of spatial features of gestures. Subsequently, we demonstrate how CG can be applied to analyze the structure of multimodal, spoken-gestured utterances. These analyses suggest that the constructs and tools developed by CG can be employed to analyze the compositionality that exists within a single gesture (between conventional and more idiosyncratic components) as well as in the grammatical relations that may exist between gesture and speech. Finally, we raise a number of theoretical and empirical challenges.
Agricultural Holdings in Hilly-Mountain Areas in Slovenia before and after the Accession to the European Union
Authors: Knific Kristina , Bojnec Štefan
Published: February 2016

This paper presents the questionnaire results of the research on implications of the effects of Slovenia’s accession to the European Union (EU) on structural changes in agricultural holdings (AHs) in the case of Škofjeloška hilly-mountain rural areas. The effects are studied based on the analysis of income diversification of AHs three years before the Slovenian accession to the EU in 2000 and six years after the Slovenian accession to the EU in 2010. Strategies of AHs on the basis of the questionnaire were analysed in early 2011. Income diversification of AHs with non-agricultural employment and off-farm incomes is necessary for survival for the majority of AHs. There are observed differences in structural changes in the AHs between areas with different natural conditions for agricultural production, and particularly in the extent and in the direction of structural changes by socioeconomic types of AHs. Structural changes inhibit non-economic objectives of AHs, while non-agricultural employment has a two-way influence.
Rural Families and Households in Post-Socialist Transition: Serbian Experience1
Authors: Čikić Jovana , Petrović Marica
Published: February 2016

Rural families and households make a basic framework for understanding the rural way of life. This relation is especially interesting under the recent and difficult post-socialist transition in places such as Serbia. Previous research has shown that the transition and its benefits are not distributed equally. This has induced social and economic disparities, at the expense of the social attractiveness of rural areas. These disparities have influenced characteristics of Serbian rural families and households, their survival strategies and their roles in the reproduction of the rural way of life. We started research with three assumptions: a) depopulation of Serbian rural areas continues under the post-socialist transition, b) transitional risks produce partial retraditionalization of Serbian rural family relationships, and c) characteristics of Serbian regions affect characteristics of rural families and households.

The analysis confirmed rural depopulation. In the decade 2002–2011, there was the most significant decline ever in the number of Serbian rural families. This signified the negative impact of transition on rural areas. Besides this, the research confirmed that contemporary Serbian rural families and households still have some traditional features (multiple generations, relics of the role of head of the traditional rural family) which enable them to cope with transitional risks. A third finding proved that characteristics of Serbian rural families and households depend on regional characteristics. Within the regions that are more socially attractive and where the risks of social exclusion are lower, retraditionalization of rural families is less noticeable. It can be concluded that contemporary Serbian rural families and households survive throughout transition periods depending on their characteristics, but also characteristics of their social environment. Stronger social magnetism of a region is manifested in stronger rural social vitality. That is reflected in stronger modernization of rural families and households.
Territorial Aspects of Regional Identity and Respondents’ Identification with the Region and Place: Case Study of Slovakia1
Authors: Bucher Slavomír , Nováková Štefánia
Published: February 2016

The purpose of the study is to focus on the understanding of sense of place through the conceptualisation of regional identity. The theory of institutionalisation of regions, by geographers Chojnicki and Paasi, gives us a useful framework for understanding how regions and regional identity emerge, continually reproduce and, thus, transform in and through the practice of individuals and institutions at a variety of spatial levels. The submitted paper creates a compact mosaic of the selected theoretical approaches and chosen concepts of new regional, cultural and behavioural geography, which can be used in regional identity researches. The central purpose of the paper is to enrich and explain the possibilities of utilisation of behavioural techniques in the formation of regional identity and the identity of the area. The aim of the study is to identify the level of respondents’ patriotism towards the selected hierarchical and residential regions of Slovakia.