bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Impact of surgical maxillomandibular advancement upon pharyngeal airway volume and the apnoea–hypopnoea index in the treatment of obstructive sleep apnoea: systematic review and meta-analysis
Authors: Giralt-Hernando Maria , Valls-Ontañón Adaia , Guijarro-Martínez Raquel , Masià-Gridilla Jorge , Hernández-Alfaro Federico 
Published: October 2019

BackgroundA systematic review was carried out on the effect of surgical maxillomandibular advancement (MMA) on pharyngeal airway (PA) dimensions and the apnoea–hypopnoea index (AHI) in the treatment of obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), with the aim of determining whether increased PA in the context of MMA is the main factor conditioning the subsequent decrease in AHI.MethodsA search was made of the PubMed, Embase, Google Scholar and Cochrane databases. A total of 496 studies were identified. The inclusion criteria were a diagnosis of moderate to severe OSA, MMA success evaluated by polysomnography, reporting of the magnitude of MMA achieved, PA increase and a minimum follow-up of 6 months.ResultsFollowing application of the eligibility criteria, eight articles were included. Metaregression analysis showed MMA to significantly increase both pharyngeal airway volume (PAV) (mean 7.35 cm3(range 5.35–9.34)) and pharyngeal airway space (mean 4.75 mm (range 3.15–6.35)) and ensure a final AHI score below the threshold of 20 (mean 12.9 events/hour).ConclusionsAlthough subgroup analysis showed MMA to be effective in treating OSA, more randomised trials are needed to individualise the required magnitude and direction of surgical movements in each patient, and to standardise the measurements of linear and nonlinear PAV parameters.
Pregnancies associated with etonogestrel implants in the UK: comparison of two 5-year reporting periods
Authors: Rowlands Sam , Cornforth Emma , Harrison-Woolrych Mira 
Published: October 2019

Objectives(1) To identify pregnancies associated with the use of the contraceptive implants Implanon and Nexplanon in the UK during two 5-year reporting periods. (2) To classify the possible reasons for device failure in cases reported for each implant. (3) To examine any differences between reasons for pregnancies associated with these products.Study designExtraction of data from the UK spontaneous reporting system for adverse drug reactions in relation to etonogestrel implants. Reports indicating pregnancy were identified for the periods 2005–2009 (Implanon) and 2012–2016 (Nexplanon). Possible reasons for failure of the method in each reported case were assigned to one of eight predetermined categories.ResultsAfter exclusions, 229 Implanon and 234 Nexplanon cases contained sufficient information for analysis. True method failures accounted for a majority of the pregnancies in those using contraceptive implants (58%); the next most common cause was missing implants (26% of pregnancies). In all categories of cases, there was no difference in frequency of pregnancy when the two time periods were compared.ConclusionsThere is still potential for greater avoidance of pregnancies associated with etonogestrel implant use.ImplicationsThis study underscores the continuing need for taking a full drug history, timing the insertion on days 1–5 or according to recommended quick starting routines and palpating the arm after implant insertion.
Social determinants of self-reported pre-exposure prophylaxis use among a national sample of US men who have sex with men
Authors: Chu Brian A , Castellanos Erick R , Gonzales Manuel M , Gaither Thomas W 
Published: October 2019

PurposeVarious disparities exist in HIV transmission among men who have sex with men (MSM). Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has been shown to decrease the acquisition of HIV, but there is variation in uptake within the MSM population. We aim to characterise PrEP use and correlates of self-reported PrEP use in a large national sample of urban MSM in the USA.MethodsUsing data from a geosocial-networking application, a national sample (n=3744) from the largest 50 metropolitan centres in the USA was obtained.ResultsWe found 18.1% (95% CI 16.8 to 19.3) of profiles reported using PrEP, with decreased reported PrEP use in younger MSM aged 18–24 years (adjusted OR (aOR)=0.5, 95% CI 0.3 to 0.7), obese MSM (aOR=0.5, 95% CI 0.3 to 0.9), black MSM (aOR=0.6, 95% CI 0.4 to 0.9) and MSM in the South (aOR=0.7, 95% CI 0.5 to 0.9).ConclusionSignificant disparities exist in PrEP reporting by age and among black, Southern US and obese MSM. More research is needed to better understand these disparities.
Developments towards the delivery of selenium ion beams at ISOLDE
Authors: Chrysalidis K. , Ballof J. , Düllmann Ch. E. , Fedosseev V. N. , Granados C. , Marsh B. A. , Martinez Palenzuela Y. , Ramos J. P. , Rothe S. , Stora T. , Wendt K. 
Published: October 2019

Abstract.
The production of selenium ion beams has been investigated at the CERN-ISOLDE facility via two different ionization methods. Whilst molecular selenium (SeCO) beams were produced at ISOLDE since the early 1990s, recent attempts at reliably reproducing these results have so far been unsuccessful. Here we report on tests of a step-wise resonance laser ionization scheme for atomic selenium using the ISOLDE Resonance Ionization Laser Ion Source (RILIS). For stable selenium an ionization efficiency of 1% was achieved. During the first on-line radioisotope production tests, a yield of $ \approx 2.4 \times 10^4$≈2.4×104 ions/μC was measured for 71Se+, using a ZrO2 target with an electron impact ion source. In parallel, an approach for extraction of molecular carbonyl selenide (SeCO) beams was tested. The same ion source and target material were used and a maximum yield of $ \approx 3.6\times 10^5$≈3.6×105 ions/μ C of 71SeCO+ was measured.
Gradient continuity estimates for the normalized p-Poisson equation
Authors: Banerjee Agnid , Munive Isidro H. 
Published: October 2019

In this paper, we obtain gradient continuity estimates for viscosity solutions of [Formula: see text] in terms of the scaling critical [Formula: see text]-norm of [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the normalized [Formula: see text]-Laplacian operator. Our main result corresponds to the borderline gradient continuity estimate in terms of the modified Riesz potential [Formula: see text]. Moreover, for [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text], we also obtain [Formula: see text] estimates. This improves one of the regularity results in [A. Attouchi, M. Parviainen and E. Ruosteenoja, [Formula: see text] regularity for the normalized [Formula: see text]-Poisson problem, J. Math. Pures Appl. (9) 108(4) (2017) 553–591], where a [Formula: see text] estimate was established depending on the [Formula: see text]-norm of [Formula: see text] under the additional restriction that [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. We also mention that differently from the approach in the above paper, which uses methods from divergence form theory and nonlinear potential theory, the method in this paper is more non-variational in nature, and it is based on separation of phases inspired by the ideas in [L. Wang, Compactness methods for certain degenerate elliptic equations, J. Differential Equations 107(2) (1994) 341–350]. Moreover, for [Formula: see text] continuous, our approach also gives a somewhat different proof of the [Formula: see text] regularity result.
Polar
Authors: Luo Zhengxiong , Zuo Feilong , Jiang Yu , Gao Jian , Jiao Xun , Sun Jiaguang 
Published: October 2019

Industrial Control System (ICS) protocols are widely used to build communications among system components. Compared with common internet protocols, ICS protocols have more control over remote devices by carrying a specific field called “function code”, which assigns what the receive end should do. Therefore, it is of vital importance to ensure their correctness. However, traditional vulnerability detection techniques such as fuzz testing are challenged by the increasing complexity of these diverse ICS protocols.
In this paper, we present a function code aware fuzzing framework — Polar, which automatically extracts semantic information from the ICS protocol and utilizes this information to accelerate security vulnerability detection. Based on static analysis and dynamic taint analysis, Polar initiates the values of the function code field and identifies some vulnerable operations. Then, novel semantic aware mutation and selection strategies are designed to optimize the fuzzing procedure. For evaluation, we implement Polar on top of two popular fuzzers — AFL and AFLFast, and conduct experiments on several widely used ICS protocols such as Modbus, IEC104, and IEC 61850. Results show that, compared with AFL and AFLFast, Polar achieves the same code coverage and bug detection numbers at the speed of 1.5X-12X. It also gains increase with 0%--91% more paths within 24 hours. Furthermore, Polar has exposed 10 previously unknown vulnerabilities in those protocols, 6 of which have been assigned unique CVE identifiers in the US National Vulnerability Database.
Complete monitors for gradual types
Authors: Greenman Ben , Felleisen Matthias , Dimoulas Christos 
Published: October 2019

In the context of gradual typing, type soundness guarantees the safety of typed code. When untyped code fails to respect types, a runtime check finds the discrepancy. As for untyped code, type soundness makes no promises; it does not protect untyped code from mistakes in type specifications and unwarranted blame.
To address the asymmetry, this paper adapts complete monitoring from the contract world to gradual typing. Complete monitoring strengthens plain soundness into a guarantee that catches problems with faulty type specifications. Furthermore, a semantics that satisfies complete monitoring can easily pinpoint the conflict between a type specification and a value. For gradual typing systems that fail complete monitoring, the technical framework provides a source-of-truth to assess the quality of blame.
Modular verification for almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs
Authors: Huang Mingzhang , Fu Hongfei , Chatterjee Krishnendu , Goharshady Amir Kafshdar 
Published: October 2019

In this work, we consider the almost-sure termination problem for probabilistic programs that asks whether a given probabilistic program terminates with probability 1. Scalable approaches for program analysis often rely on modularity as their theoretical basis. In non-probabilistic programs, the classical variant rule (V-rule) of Floyd-Hoare logic provides the foundation for modular analysis. Extension of this rule to almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs is quite tricky, and a probabilistic variant was proposed by Fioriti and Hermanns in POPL 2015. While the proposed probabilistic variant cautiously addresses the key issue of integrability, we show that the proposed modular rule is still not sound for almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs.
Besides establishing unsoundness of the previous rule, our contributions are as follows: First, we present a sound modular rule for almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs. Our approach is based on a novel notion of descent supermartingales. Second, for algorithmic approaches, we consider descent supermartingales that are linear and show that they can be synthesized in polynomial time. Finally, we present experimental results on a variety of benchmarks and several natural examples that model various types of nested while loops in probabilistic programs and demonstrate that our approach is able to efficiently prove their almost-sure termination property.
Weakening WebAssembly
Authors: Watt Conrad , Rossberg Andreas , Pichon-Pharabod Jean 
Published: October 2019

WebAssembly (Wasm) is a safe, portable virtual instruction set that can be hosted in a wide range of environments, such as a Web browser. It is a low-level language whose instructions are intended to compile directly to bare hardware. While the initial version of Wasm focussed on single-threaded computation, a recent proposal extends it with low-level support for multiple threads and atomic instructions for synchronised access to shared memory. To support the correct compilation of concurrent programs, it is necessary to give a suitable specification of its memory model.
Wasm's language definition is based on a fully formalised specification that carefully avoids undefined behaviour. We present a substantial extension to this semantics, incorporating a relaxed memory model, along with a few proposed extensions. Wasm's memory model is unique in that its linear address space can be dynamically grown during execution, while all accesses are bounds-checked. This leads to the novel problem of specifying how observations about the size of the memory can propagate between threads. We argue that, considering desirable compilation schemes, we cannot give a sequentially consistent semantics to memory growth.
We show that our model provides sequential consistency for data-race-free executions (SC-DRF). However, because Wasm is to run on the Web, we must also consider interoperability of its model with that of JavaScript. We show, by counter-example, that JavaScript's memory model is not SC-DRF, in contrast to what is claimed in its specification. We propose two axiomatic conditions that should be added to the JavaScript model to correct this difference.
We also describe a prototype SMT-based litmus tool which acts as an oracle for our axiomatic model, visualising its behaviours, including memory resizing.
Generating precise error specifications for C: a zero shot learning approach
Authors: Wu Baijun , Campora III John Peter , He Yi , Schlecht Alexander , Chen Sheng 
Published: October 2019

In C programs, error specifications, which specify the value range that each function returns to indicate failures, are widely used to check and propagate errors for the sake of reliability and security. Various kinds of C analyzers employ error specifications for different purposes, e.g., to detect error handling bugs, yet a general approach for generating precise specifications is still missing. This limits the applicability of those tools.In this paper, we solve this problem by developing a machine learning-based approach named MLPEx. It generates error specifications by analyzing only the source code, and is thus general. We propose a novel machine learning paradigm based on transfer learning, enabling MLPEx to require only one-time minimal data labeling from us (as the tool developers) and zero manual labeling efforts from users. To improve the accuracy of generated error specifications, MLPEx extracts and exploits project-specific information. We evaluate MLPEx on 10 projects, including 6 libraries and 4 applications. An investigation of 3,443 functions and 17,750 paths reveals that MLPEx generates error specifications with a precision of 91% and a recall of 94%, significantly higher than those of state-of-the-art approaches. To further demonstrate the usefulness of the generated error specifications, we use them to detect 57 bugs in 5 tested projects.
Trace aware random testing for distributed systems
Authors: Ozkan Burcu Kulahcioglu , Majumdar Rupak , Oraee Simin 
Published: October 2019

Distributed and concurrent applications often have subtle bugs that only get exposed under specific schedules. While these schedules may be found by systematic model checking techniques, in practice, model checkers do not scale to large systems. On the other hand, naive random exploration techniques often require a very large number of runs to find the specific interactions needed to expose a bug. In recent years, several random testing algorithms have been proposed that, on the one hand, exploit state-space reduction strategies from model checking and, on the other, provide guarantees on the probability of hitting bugs of certain kinds.
These existing techniques exploit two orthogonal strategies to reduce the state space: partial-order reduction and bug depth. Testing algorithms based on partial order techniques, such as RAPOS or POS, ensure non-redundant exploration of independent interleavings among system events by imposing an equivalence relation on schedules and ideally exploring only one schedule from each equivalence class. Techniques based on bug depth, such as PCT, exploit the empirical observation that many bugs are exposed by the clever scheduling of a small number of key events. They bias the sample space of schedules to only cover all executions of small depth, rather than the much larger space of all schedules. At this point, there is no random testing algorithm that combines the power of both approaches.
In this paper, we provide such an algorithm. Our algorithm, trace-aware PCT (taPCTCP), extends and unifies several different algorithms in the random testing literature. It samples the space of low-depth executions by constructing a schedule online, while taking dependencies among events into account. Moreover, the algorithm comes with a theoretical guarantee on the probability of sampling a trace of low depth---the probability grows exponentially with the depth but only polynomially with the number of racy events explored. We further show that the guarantee is optimal among a large class of techniques.
We empirically compare our algorithm with several state-of-the-art random testing approaches for concurrent software on two large-scale distributed systems, Zookeeper and Cassandra, and show that our approach is effective in uncovering subtle bugs and usually outperforms related random testing algorithms.
ApproxHPVM: a portable compiler IR for accuracy-aware optimizations
Authors: Sharif Hashim , Srivastava Prakalp , Huzaifa Muhammad , Kotsifakou Maria , Joshi Keyur , Sarita Yasmin , Zhao Nathan , Adve Vikram S. , Misailovic Sasa , Adve Sarita 
Published: October 2019

We propose ApproxHPVM, a compiler IR and system designed to enable accuracy-aware performance and energy tuning on heterogeneous systems with multiple compute units and approximation methods. ApproxHPVM automatically translates end-to-end application-level quality metrics into accuracy requirements for individual operations. ApproxHPVM uses a hardware-agnostic accuracy-tuning phase to do this translation that provides greater portability across heterogeneous hardware platforms and enables future capabilities like accuracy-aware dynamic scheduling and design space exploration.
ApproxHPVM incorporates three main components: (a) a compiler IR with hardware-agnostic approximation metrics, (b) a hardware-agnostic accuracy-tuning phase to identify error-tolerant computations, and (c) an accuracy-aware hardware scheduler that maps error-tolerant computations to approximate hardware components. As ApproxHPVM does not incorporate any hardware-specific knowledge as part of the IR, it can serve as a portable virtual ISA that can be shipped to all kinds of hardware platforms.
We evaluate our framework on nine benchmarks from the deep learning domain and five image processing benchmarks. Our results show that our framework can offload chunks of approximable computations to special-purpose accelerators that provide significant gains in performance and energy, while staying within user-specified application-level quality metrics with high probability. Across the 14 benchmarks, we observe from 1-9x performance speedups and 1.1-11.3x energy reduction for very small reductions in accuracy.
Ventricular vortex loss analysis due to various tricuspid valve repair techniques: an ex vivo study
Authors: Nguyen Yen Ngoc , Tay Edgar Lik Wui , Kabinejadian Foad , Ong Chi Wei , Ismail Munirah , Leo Hwa Liang 
Published: October 2019

The deteriorating nature of severe functional tricuspid regurgitation (FTR) has led to the heightened interest in this pathology. However, therapies are heterogeneous and an ideal technique is uncertain. The hemodynamic impact on the cardiac chamber following therapeutic repairs has not been well studied, while its analysis could be used to predict the treatment success. In this study, the hemodynamics of the right ventricle (RV) after 1) clover edge-to-edge tricuspid repair, and 2) double orifice tricuspid repair was evaluated in three right heart models using an ex vivo pulsatile platform emulating severe FTR with the aid of stereoscopic particle image velocimetry. Although all repairs substantially reduced tricuspid regurgitant area, they resulted in a more than 50% reduction in diastolic tricuspid valve (TV) opening area. Splitting the TV orifice into multiple smaller orifices by both repairs eliminated the ring-shaped vortical structure inside the RV observed in FTR cases. Postrepair RV domain was mostly occupied with irregular vortical features and isolated vortex residuals. Moreover, vortical features varied among repair samples, indicating enhanced sensitivity of RV flow to postrepair TV morphology. Compared with clover repair, double orifice subjected the RV to enhanced swirling motions and exposed more regions to vortical motions, potentially indicating better rinsing and lower risk of mural thrombus formation. Double orifice repair increased the levels of RV mean kinetic energy and viscous energy loss than those observed in clover repair, although the impact of these on the cardiac efficiency remains unclear. These preliminary insights could be used to improve future treatment design and planning. NEW & NOTEWORTHY While clover and double orifice tricuspid repairs markedly improved leaflet coaptation, they substantially reduced diastolic tricuspid opening area. Postrepair right ventricle (RV) exhibited specific hemodynamic traits, including the loss of ring-shaped vortical structure and the enhanced sensitivity of RV flow to postrepair tricuspid valve morphology. Compared with clover technique, double orifice repair led to higher swirling motions in the RV domain, which could indicate lower risk of mural thrombus formation.
Reaction of tomato genotypes to Meloidogyne enterolobii and effects of resistance inducing products
Authors: de O. Silva Juliana , Santana Marcus V. , Carneiro Franciele A. , da Rocha Mara R. 
Published: October 2019

Summary
Meloidogyne enterolobii is characterised by its aggressiveness and ability to reproduce on plants carrying the Mi resistance gene. However, resistant cultivars and resistance induction may be alternatives to keep the pest population at levels that do not cause economic damage. The aim of this study was to evaluate the reaction of tomato genotypes to M. enterolobii and test the efficacy of resistance inducers in four tomato genotypes. Twenty-one tomato genotypes were inoculated with 2000 eggs of M. enterolobii and evaluated after 35 days of inoculation. All genotypes tested were susceptible to M. enterolobii. Four tomato genotypes were selected and the plants were treated with Bacillus subtilis, B. licheniformis + B. subtilis + Trichoderma longibrachiatum, Acibenzolar-S-methyl (ASM) and extract of Reynoutria sachalinensis. The plants treated with B. subtilis showed higher shoot and root weight. ASM reduced the reproduction factor of M. enterolobii when applied to the genotype ‘PXT 408’. All tomato genotypes tested here are susceptible to M. enterolobii, thus confirming the ability this plant-parasitic nematode to reproduce on resistant plants with the Mi gene. The resistance inducers B. subtilis, B. licheniformis + B. subtilis + T. longibrachiatum and extract of R. sachalinensis did not influence the final nematode population in any of the genotypes used; however, ASM reduces reproduction of M. enterolobii to the genotype ‘PXT 408’.