bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Impact of the WHO FCTC on non-cigarette tobacco products
Authors: Zaatari Ghazi S , Bazzi Asma 
Published: July 2018

IntroductionThis paper investigates to what extent Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) parties have successfully implemented regulatory measures against non-cigarette tobacco product (NCTP) use, considers the challenges and peculiarities in applying such regulations and proposes effective means.Data and methodsThis review was based on many sources mainly: International Legal Consortium, International Tobacco Control, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, FCTC, expert group visits and published literature.Findings and conclusionThe FCTC provided a framework that applies to all forms of tobacco and this encouraged some parties to adopt control measures against NCTP and to incorporate them into their national tobacco control plans. Although a number of countries have adopted measures specifically targeted towards smokeless and waterpipe tobacco, greater global progress is needed. The strongest achievements have been in protection from exposure to tobacco smoke; controlling advertising, promotion and sponsorship; controlling sales to and by minors; education, communication and public awareness; and packaging and labelling of NCTP. Countries which adopted broad definitions of tobacco products have demonstrated encouraging trends in curbing their use. Future work should address the deep-rooted social acceptance of NCTP, the laxity in their control, their exclusion from regulations in some countries and the failure to subject them to increased taxation. Control measures should also specifically target the initiation risk to youth and adolescents and all factors that contribute to that such as banning flavourings and promotions through social media. Stronger global surveillance of NCTP use, tracking of policy implementation and evaluation of policy impact will provide important evidence to assist parties in fully implementing the FCTC to control their use.
Towards virtual reality infinite walking
Authors: Sun Qi , Patney Anjul , Wei Li-Yi , Shapira Omer , Lu Jingwan , Asente Paul , Zhu Suwen , Mcguire Morgan , Luebke David , Kaufman Arie 
Published: July 2018

Redirected walking techniques can enhance the immersion and visual-vestibular comfort of virtual reality (VR) navigation, but are often limited by the size, shape, and content of the physical environments.
We propose a redirected walking technique that can apply to small physical environments with static or dynamic obstacles. Via a head- and eye-tracking VR headset, our method detects saccadic suppression and redirects the users during the resulting temporary blindness. Our dynamic path planning runs in real-time on a GPU, and thus can avoid static and dynamic obstacles, including walls, furniture, and other VR users sharing the same physical space. To further enhance saccadic redirection, we propose subtle gaze direction methods tailored for VR perception.
We demonstrate that saccades can significantly increase the rotation gains during redirection without introducing visual distortions or simulator sickness. This allows our method to apply to large open virtual spaces and small physical environments for room-scale VR. We evaluate our system via numerical simulations and real user studies.
The layer laboratory
Authors: Zeltner Tizian , Jakob Wenzel 
Published: July 2018

We present a versatile computational framework for modeling the reflective and transmissive properties of arbitrarily layered anisotropic material structures. Given a set of input layers, our model synthesizes an effective BSDF of the entire structure, which accounts for all orders of internal scattering and is efficient to sample and evaluate in modern rendering systems.
Our technique builds on the insight that reflectance data is sparse when expanded into a suitable frequency-space representation, and that this property extends to the class of anisotropic materials. This sparsity enables an efficient matrix calculus that admits the entire space of BSDFs and considerably expands the scope of prior work on layered material modeling. We show how both measured data and the popular class of microfacet models can be expressed in our representation, and how the presence of anisotropy leads to a weak coupling between Fourier orders in frequency space.
In addition to additive composition, our models supports subtractive composition, a fascinating new operation that reconstructs the BSDF of a material that can only be observed indirectly through another layer with known reflectance properties. The operation produces a new BSDF of the desired layer as if measured in isolation. Subtractive composition can be interpreted as a type of deconvolution that removes both internal scattering and blurring due to transmission through the known layer.

We experimentally demonstrate the accuracy and scope of our model and validate both additive and subtractive composition using measurements of real-world layered materials. Both implementation and data will be released to ensure full reproducibility of all of our results.
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Tetrahedral meshing in the wild
Authors: Hu Yixin , Zhou Qingnan , Gao Xifeng , Jacobson Alec , Zorin Denis , Panozzo Daniele 
Published: July 2018

We propose a novel tetrahedral meshing technique that is unconditionally robust, requires no user interaction, and can directly convert a triangle soup into an analysis-ready volumetric mesh. The approach is based on several core principles: (1) initial mesh construction based on a fully robust, yet efficient, filtered exact computation (2) explicit (automatic or user-defined) tolerancing of the mesh relative to the surface input (3) iterative mesh improvement with guarantees, at every step, of the output validity. The quality of the resulting mesh is a direct function of the target mesh size and allowed tolerance: increasing allowed deviation from the initial mesh and decreasing the target edge length both lead to higher mesh quality.
Our approach enables "black-box" analysis, i.e. it allows to automatically solve partial differential equations on geometrical models available in the wild, offering a robustness and reliability comparable to, e.g., image processing algorithms, opening the door to automatic, large scale processing of real-world geometric data.
Differentiable programming for image processing and deep learning in halide
Authors: Li Tzu-Mao , Gharbi Michaël , Adams Andrew , Durand Frédo , Ragan-Kelley Jonathan 
Published: July 2018

Gradient-based optimization has enabled dramatic advances in computational imaging through techniques like deep learning and nonlinear optimization. These methods require gradients not just of simple mathematical functions, but of general
programs
which encode complex transformations of images and graphical data. Unfortunately, practitioners have traditionally been limited to either hand-deriving gradients of complex computations, or composing programs from a limited set of coarse-grained operators in deep learning frameworks. At the same time, writing programs with the level of performance needed for imaging and deep learning is prohibitively difficult for most programmers.

We extend the image processing language Halide with general reverse-mode automatic differentiation (AD), and the ability to automatically optimize the implementation of gradient computations. This enables automatic computation of the gradients of arbitrary Halide programs, at high performance, with little programmer effort. A key challenge is to structure the gradient code to retain parallelism. We define a simple algorithm to automatically schedule these pipelines, and show how Halide's existing scheduling primitives can express and extend the key AD optimization of "checkpointing."
Using this new tool, we show how to easily define new neural network layers which automatically compile to high-performance GPU implementations, and how to solve nonlinear inverse problems from computational imaging. Finally, we show how differentiable programming enables dramatically improving the quality of even traditional, feed-forward image processing algorithms, blurring the distinction between classical and deep methods.
Competitive parallelism: getting your priorities right
Authors: Muller Stefan K. , Acar Umut A. , Harper Robert 
Published: July 2018

Multi-threaded programs have traditionally fallen into one of two domains: cooperative and competitive. These two domains have traditionally remained mostly disjoint, with cooperative threading used for increasing throughput in compute-intensive applications such as scientific workloads and cooperative threading used for increasing responsiveness in interactive applications such as GUIs and games. As multicore hardware becomes increasingly mainstream, there is a need for bridging these two disjoint worlds, because many applications mix interaction and computation and would benefit from both cooperative and competitive threading.
In this paper, we present techniques for programming and reasoning about parallel interactive applications that can use both cooperative and competitive threading. Our techniques enable the programmer to write rich parallel interactive programs by creating and synchronizing with threads as needed, and by assigning threads user-defined and partially ordered priorities. To ensure important responsiveness properties, we present a modal type system analogous to S4 modal logic that precludes low-priority threads from delaying high-priority threads, thereby statically preventing a crucial set of priority-inversion bugs. We then present a cost model that allows reasoning about responsiveness and completion time of well-typed programs. The cost model extends the traditional work-span model for cooperative threading to account for competitive scheduling decisions needed to ensure responsiveness. Finally, we show that our proposed techniques are realistic by implementing them as an extension to the Standard ML language.
Keep your laziness in check
Authors: Foner Kenneth , Zhang Hengchu , Lampropoulos Leonidas 
Published: July 2018

We introduce StrictCheck: a property-based random testing framework for observing, specifying, and testing the strictness of Haskell functions. Strictness is traditionally considered a non-functional property; StrictCheck allows it to be tested as if it were one, by reifying demands on data structures so they can be manipulated and examined within Haskell.
Testing strictness requires us to 1) precisely specify the strictness of functions, 2) efficiently observe the evaluation of data structures, and 3) correctly generate functions with random strictness. We tackle all three of these challenges, designing an efficient generic framework for precise dynamic strictness testing. StrictCheck can specify and test the strictness of any Haskell function---including higher-order ones---with only a constant factor of overhead, and requires no boilerplate for testing functions on Haskell-standard algebraic data types. We provide an expressive but low-level specification language as a foundation upon which to build future higher-level abstractions.
We demonstrate a non-trivial application of our library, developing a correct specification of a data structure whose properties intrinsically rely on subtle use of laziness: Okasaki's constant-time purely functional queue.
What do parrots and BGP routers have in common?
Authors: Hauweele David , Quoitin Bruno , Pelsser Cristel , Bush Randy 
Published: July 2018

The Border Gateway Protocol propagates routing information accross the Internet in an incremental manner. It only advertises to its peers changes in routing. However, as early as 1998, observations have been made of BGP announcing the same route multiple times, causing router CPU load, memory usage and convergence time higher than expected.
In this paper, by performing controlled experiments, we pinpoint multiple causes of duplicates, ranging from the lack of full RIB-Outs to the discrete processing of update messages. To mitigate these duplicates, we insert a cache at the output of the routers. We test it on public BGP traces and discuss the relation of the cache performance with the existence of bursts of updates in the trace.
Evangelical Worship: A Conversation with Three Publics
Authors: Ross Melanie 
Published: July 2018

Abstract
In this article the author makes an argument for evangelical worship as a form of public theology. The analysis proceeds in three parts. The first section examines depictions of evangelicals in American public media in order to show how evangelicalism and worship are closely linked in society’s imagination. The second section draws on debates between David Tracy and George Lindbeck to explain evangelicals’ distinctive approach to worship and witness. The third section presents a case study of a Sunday service at an evangelical megachurch, and suggests that increased attention to congregational worship practices can mitigate tensions between populist and academic understandings of public theology.
The Violence of Bureaucracy and the Gospel of Peace: A Theological Response to an Academic Problem
Authors: Edwards Aaron 
Published: July 2018

Abstract
Why do academic theologians spend most of their time complying with (and complaining about) bureaucracy? To what extent are the bureaucratic pressures upon theology a form of violence, and how might theology respond? This article engages social anthropologist David Graeber’s creative critique of bureaucracy in The Utopia of Rules (2016) and applies it towards a distinctly theological reading of the bureaucratic problem. Drawing widely on a number of thinkers, including Arendt, Foucault, Webster, Calvin, Hauerwas, Ellul, and others, the article diagnoses the inherent complexity of any theological response to bureaucracy, before offering an alternative mode of revolutionary compliance via the Biblical proclamation of the gospel of peace. If unspoken violence is indeed the heart of the bureaucratic problem, theology might respond with its own imaginatively interruptive language which proclaims how Christ—the Giver of peace armed with a gospel of peace—confronts all totalitarian systems, especially the unacknowledged.
Human Identity, Political Recognition and Social Symbiosis: A Public Theological Perspective
Authors: Vorster Nico 
Published: July 2018

Abstract
Muslim radicalization has forced western states to rethink policies on integrating minority communities into their societies. As a result, some European countries are in the process of replacing the traditional multiculturalist state paradigms with a civic integration model. This article warns against integration policies that: i) create parallel societies; ii). impose the identity of the majority group on minority groups; iii). or impose a difference-blind universal identity on all its citizens. Drawing on the Christian-informed political philosophies of John Althusius and Charles Taylor, the case is made for an inclusionary political mindset that addresses the challenges of globalization and pluralization. The approach proposed is termed symbiotic politics and is based on a common respect for political values such as human dignity, equality and freedom that are essential for human coexistence, a shared commitment to non-aggression and mutual aid, and the political recognition of collective identities.
Developmental stage does not affect resting metabolic rate in the monitor lizard, Varanus salvator
Authors: Yao Yun-Tao , Du Yu , Fang Meng-Chao , Lin Long-Hui , Ji Xiang 
Published: July 2018

AbstractWe have studied resting metabolic rate (RMR) of the water monitor lizard (Varanus salvator) at different developmental stages (hatchling, juvenile and adult) to test whether individuals at different ages differ in RMR when controlling for the effects of body mass. We found that: 1) resting metabolic rates of hatchlings, juveniles and adults were all positively related to their body mass with the same coefficients and that 2) developmental stage had a non-significant influence on the resting metabolic rate when controlling for the effects of body mass. Our results suggest that variation in resting metabolic rate forV. salvatoris directly caused by body mass differences, which conforms to previous findings in mammal species and birds.
Rethinking Justice in International Environmental Negotiations: Toward a More Comprehensive Framework
Authors: Tritschoks Annkatrin 
Published: July 2018

AbstractJustice is of central importance in international environmental negotiations. Key characteristics of this type of negotiation augment the complexities of justice issues and warrant a customized approach. Based on a discussion of these characteristics, the article derives four components that are central to a more comprehensive theoretical framework for analyzing justice in environmental negotiations: 1) going beyond narrow self-interest, 2) extending the notion of reciprocity, 3) linking backward- and forward-orientation, and 4) connecting process and outcome. The usefulness of the framework is illustrated by applying it to two important Conferences of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – COP15 in Copenhagen and COP21 in Paris – which are compared. The framework is suited for a systematic analysis of the complex role played by justice issues in international environmental negotiation, as a key avenue for addressing global threats emerging from anthropogenic environmental change.
Notes on two rare conger eel species (Anguilliformes: Congridae) found in Taiwanese waters
Authors: HO HSUAN-CHING , SMITH DAVID G. , HUANG JIAN-FU 
Published: July 2018

Although Taiwan is a small island, it occupies a strategic biogeographic position between the faunal regions of Japan to the north and the Philippines to the south. As a result, it has an interesting mixture of northern and southern species. In this paper, we report new records of two species of congrid eel, one known previously from Japan and China, and the other known only from the Philippines. The first species, Promyllantor nezumi Asano, 1958, was described by Asano (1958) and reassigned to a newly established genus Acromycter by Smith & Kanazawa (1977). Zhang (1989) reported the species from east of Hainan Island, China. The second species, Gnathophis asanoi Karmovskaya, 2004, was described from the Philippines based on two types. Ho et al. (2015) reported one specimen collected from Taiwan but provided one additional specimen was collected more recently.
Using Bayesian Correspondence Criteria to Compare Results From a Randomized Experiment and a Quasi-Experiment Allowing Self-Selection
Authors: Rindskopf David M. , Shadish William R. , Clark M. H. 
Published: July 2018

Background: Randomized experiments yield unbiased estimates of treatment effect, but such experiments are not always feasible. So researchers have searched for conditions under which randomized and nonrandomized experiments can yield the same answer. This search requires well-justified and informative correspondence criteria, that is, criteria by which we can judge if the results from an appropriately adjusted nonrandomized experiment well-approximate results from randomized experiments. Past criteria have relied exclusively on frequentist statistics, using criteria such as whether results agree in sign or statistical significance or whether results differ significantly from each other. Objectives: In this article, we show how Bayesian correspondence criteria offer more varied, nuanced, and informative answers than those from frequentist approaches. Research design: We describe the conceptual bases of Bayesian correspondence criteria and then illustrate many possibilities using an example that compares results from a randomized experiment to results from a parallel nonequivalent comparison group experiment in which participants could choose their condition. Results: Results suggest that, in this case, the quasi-experiment reasonably approximated the randomized experiment. Conclusions: We conclude with a discussion of the advantages (computation of relevant quantities, interpretation, and estimation of quantities of interest for policy), disadvantages, and limitations of Bayesian correspondence criteria. We believe that in most circumstances, the advantages of Bayesian approaches far outweigh the disadvantages.
Improving Communication Delay of Outpatient Sleep Study Results to Pediatric Otolaryngology Patients and Families
Authors: Ruda James M. , Payne Linda , May Anne , Splaingard Mark , Lemle Stephanie , Jatana Kris R. 
Published: July 2018

ObjectiveWe undertook this quality improvement project to improve communication of outpatient pediatric sleep study results to families in a consistent and timely manner.MethodsBased on the Institute for Healthcare Improvement quality improvement methodology, multiple key drivers were identified, including standardizing documentation and communication for sleep study results among the otolaryngology department, sleep center, and families. Meaningful interventions included developing standard electronic medical record documentation and utilizing otolaryngology nurses and advanced practice nurses to assist with communication by sending the results from the sleep center to both the referring otolaryngology provider and the triage nurses. The primary outcome measure was the monthly proportion of sleep studies communicated by the otolaryngology department to families within 3 business days.ResultsAverage monthly sleep study results communicated to families within 3 business days increased from 31% to 92.9% over the study period (P <. 0001). Sleep study results were personally communicated via telephone and voicemail in 60.88% and 34.0% of cases, respectively. Approximately 50.0% of families receiving voicemails later contacted our department for their children's study results.DiscussionNovel documentation strategies and involvement of our entire clinical team (physicians, nurses, and advanced practice nurses), allowed us to significantly improve the consistency and timeliness of our communication of outpatient sleep study results to families in a proactive manner.Implications for PracticeWith time‐sensitive clinical test results, such as those from pediatric sleep studies, intra‐ and interdepartmental collaboration and standardization of the communication process and documentation may allow for more expedient care of children with suspected obstructive sleep apnea.