bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Surgical treatment for chronic Achilles tendinopathy: a prospective seven month follow up study
Authors: Paavola M , Kannus P , Orava S , Pasanen M , Järvinen M 
Published: July 2002

Objective:To prospectively assess the early results of surgical treatment of chronic Achilles tendinopathy.Methods:This seven month prospective follow up study assessed the short term results of surgical treatment of chronic Achilles tendinopathy and compared the subjective and functional outcome of patients with Achilles tendinopathy without a local intratendinous lesion (group A) with that of similar patients with such a lesion (group B). Forty two of the initial 50 patients were examined before surgery and after the seven month follow up. Evaluation included an interview, subjective evaluation, clinical tests, and a performance test.Results:At the follow up, physical activity was fully restored in 28 of the 42 patients (67%), and 35 patients (83%) were asymptomatic or had only mild pain during strenuous exercise. In clinical tests, significant improvements were observed in climbing up and down stairs and the rising on the toes test. Surgical treatment also seemed to be successful from the total test score, which was excellent or good in 35 patients, compared with before surgery when it was excellent or good in one patient only. Patients in group A fared better than those in group B, whether evaluated by recovery of physical activity after surgery (88%v54%) or the complication rate (6%v27%).Conclusions:Surgical treatment of chronic Achilles tendinopathy gives good and acceptable short term results. A lower complication rate and a trend to better recovery was observed in patients with peritendinous adhesions only than in those with peritendinous adhesions combined with an intratendinous lesion.
Truth-telling and patient diagnoses
Authors: Sullivan Robert J , Menapace Lawrence W , White Royce M 
Published: July 2002

How do physicians handle informing patients of their diagnoses and how much information do patients really want? How do registered nurses view both sides of this question?Three questionnaires were constructed and administered in a mid-size hospital in New York state. Physicians and nurses underestimate the number of patients who want detailed information. Patients who earn more than average, have a college education, and who are under age 60 are more likely to want information, and state that their physician should give it to them. Only 42% of physicians state that patients want a detailed description of their diagnosis and treatment options. Physicians educated outside the USA appeared to be more likely to change their criteria for informing patients and, along with American-educated nurses, were more willing to participate in formal discussions of the issue.Physicians should comply with the wishes of patients for information and include them in the team deciding on diagnosis and treatment.
A survey of newly appointed consultants' attitudes towards research fraud
Authors: Geggie D 
Published: July 2002

Objective—To determine the prevalence of, and attitudes towards, observed and personal research misconduct among newly appointed medical consultants.Design—Questionnaire study.Setting—Mersey region, United Kingdom.Participants—Medical consultants appointed between Jan 1995 and Jan 2000 in seven different hospital trusts (from lists provided by each hospital's personnel department).Main outcome measures—Reported observed misconduct, reported past personal misconduct and reported possible future misconduct.Results—One hundred and ninety-four replies were received (a response rate of 63.6%); 55.7% of respondents had observed some form of research misconduct; 5.7% of respondents admitted to past personal misconduct; 18% of respondents were either willing to commit or unsure about possible future research misconduct. Only 17% of the respondents reported having received any training in research ethics. Anaesthetists reported a lower incidence of observed research misconduct (33.3%) than the rest of the respondents (61.5%) (p<0.05).Conclusion—There is a higher prevalence of observed and possible future misconduct among newly appointed consultants in the UK than in the comparable study of biomedical trainees in California. Although there is a need for more extensive studies, this survey suggests that there is a real and potential problem of research misconduct in the UK.
Exposure assessment in the hard metal manufacturing industry with special regard to tungsten and its compounds
Authors: Kraus T , Schramel P , Schaller K H , Zöbelein P , Weber A , Angerer J 
Published: July 2002

OBJECTIVESTo assess the exposure to tungsten, cobalt, and nickel in a plant producing hard metals. The main components of hard metals are tungsten carbide and cobalt metal. According to recent studies, these two components may be responsible for both fibrogenic and carcinogenic effects.METHODS87 workers were investigated (86 male, one female) with a median age of 42 (range 22–58) and a mean duration of exposure of 13 years (range 1–27 years). Stationary and personal air sampling, and biological monitoring were carried out.RESULTSAmbient monitoring yielded maximum tungsten concentrations of 417 μg/m3in the production of heavy alloys. A maximum cobalt concentration of 343 μg/m3and a maximum nickel concentration of 30 μg/m3were found at the sintering workshop. The highest urinary cobalt concentrations were found in the powder processing department. The mean concentration was 28.5 μg/g creatinine and the maximum value was 228 μg/g creatinine. The maximum nickel concentration in urine of 6.3 μg/g creatinine was detected in the department producing heavy alloys. The highest tungsten concentrations excreted in urine were found in grinders and had a mean value of 94.4 μg/g creatinine and a maximum of 169 μg/g creatinine. Due to the different solubility and bioavailability of the substance, there was no correlation between the tungsten concentrations in air and urine on a group basis.CONCLUSIONSDespite its low solubility, tungsten carbide is bioavailable. The different bioavailability of tungsten metal and tungsten compounds has to be considered in the interpretation of ambient and biological monitoring data in the hard metal producing industry. The bioavailability increases in the order: tungsten metal, tungsten carbide, tungstenate. Only if both monitoring strategies are considered in combination can a valid and effective definition of high risk groups be derived.
Solvent use and time to pregnancy among female personnel in biomedical laboratories in Sweden
Authors: Wennborg H , Bodin L , Vainio H , Axelsson G 
Published: July 2002

OBJECTIVESTo elucidate possible effects on fecundability from chemical, biological, and physical agents in laboratories, a retrospective study based on a questionnaire was conducted among female personnel who worked in Swedish biomedical research laboratories. Female personnel in non-laboratory departments were used as a reference group. The maximum number of women included in the analyses was 560. This corresponded to 2519 menstrual cycles. These women had given birth at least once during the period 1990–4.METHODSTime to pregnancy was used to estimate the fecundability—that is, probability of conception of a clinically detectable pregnancy per cycle. The fecundability ratio (FR) between exposed and unexposed cycles was calculated with a discrete time analogue of the Cox's proportional-hazards model. The FR estimates below unity indicate subfecundity.RESULTSWork with organic solvents in general in laboratory work, gave a decreased adjusted fecundability ratio (FR) of 0.79 (95% confidence interval (95 % CI) 0.68 to 0.93). Moreover, work with acetone and use of viruses also showed decreased FRs, 0.72 (0.53 to 0.97) and 0.66 (0.49 to 0.90), respectively.CONCLUSIONSThe results of the present study give some indications of reduced fecundability for work with specific agents in laboratories, and support previously reported findings of a negative influence of organic solvents on fecundity among female laboratory personnel.
Immunological analysis of pleural fluid in post-cardiac injury syndrome
Authors: Shrivastava R , Venkatesh S , Pavlovich B B , Bharadwaj J , Vaz A 
Published: July 2002

Abstract
Post-cardiac injury syndrome (PCIS) is an inflammatory process involving pleura and pericardium secondary to cardiac injury. Even though this clinical entity has been recognised for decades, diagnosis is difficult because of lack of a diagnostic test. Antimyocardial antibody titre in pleural fluid and serum has been proposed to have diagnostic value. However there are inherent difficulties in measuring and interpreting the role of antimyocardial antibody. A case of PCIS with low pleural fluid complement level is reported, which it is believed can be useful to support the diagnosis of PCIS.
SIZES OF ORDERED DECISION TREES
Authors: ZANTEMA HANS , BODLAENDER HANS L. 
Published: July 2002

Decision tables provide a natural framework for knowledge acquisition and representation in the area of knowledge based information systems. Decision trees provide a standard method for inductive inference in the area of machine learning. In this paper we show how decision tables can be considered as ordered decision trees: decision trees satisfying an ordering restriction on the nodes. Every decision tree can be represented by an equivalent ordered decision tree, but we show that doing so may exponentially blow up sizes, even if the choice of the order is left free. Our main result states that finding an ordered decision tree of minimal size that represents the same function as a given ordered decision tree is an NP-hard problem; in earlier work we obtained a similar result for unordered decision trees.
RENORMALIZATION GROUP, HIDDEN SYMMETRIES AND APPROXIMATE WARD IDENTITIES IN THE XYZ MODEL
Authors: BENFATTO G. , MASTROPIETRO V. 
Published: July 2002

Using renormalization group methods, we study the Heisenberg–Ising XYZ chain in an external magnetic field directed as the z axis, in the case of small coupling J3 in the z direction. In particular, we focus our attention on the asymptotic behaviour of the spin correlation function in the direction of the magnetic field and the singularities of its Fourier transform. An expansion for the ground state energy and the effective potential is derived, which is convergent if the running coupling constants are small enough. Moreover, by using hidden symmetries of the model, we show that this condition is indeed verified, if J3 is small enough, and we derive an expansion for the spin correlation function. We also prove, by means of an approximate Ward identity, that a critical index, related with the asymptotic behaviour of the correlation function, is exactly vanishing, together with other properties, so obtaining a rather detailed description of the XYZ correlation function.
KAWACHI'S INVARIANT FOR NORMAL SURFACE SINGULARITIES
Authors: MAŞEK VLADIMIR 
Published: July 2002

We study a useful numerical invariant of normal surface singularities, introduced recently by T. Kawachi. Using this invariant, we give a quick proof of the (well-known) fact that all log-canonical surface singularities are either elliptic Gorenstein or rational (without assuming a priori that they are ℚ-Gorenstein). In Sec. 2 we prove effective results (stated in terms of Kawachi's invariant) regarding global generation of adjoint linear systems on normal surfaces with boundary. Such results can be used in proving effective estimates for global generation on singular threefolds. The theorem of Ein–Lazarsfeld and Kawamata, which says that the minimal center of log-canonical singularities is always normal, explains why the results proved here are relevant in that situation.
Electrorheology of Suspension of Sulfonated Styrene-Co-Divinylbenzene Particles — Approach Based on the Dielectric Properties of the Suspension —
Authors: Ikazaki F. , Kawai A. , Kawakami T. , Konishi M. , Asako Y. 
Published: July 2002

Effects of particle concentration, water content and temperature on the electrorheology of suspensions of highly sulfonated styrene-co-divinylbenzene (SSD) particles in a silicone oil were investigated. The induced shear stress was measured with a modified rotary rheometer. The electrorheology of the suspension was largely affected by the particle concentration, the water content and the measurement temperature. The induced shear stress for the particle concentration of 40 wt% was about twice as large as that of 20 wt%. The induced shear stress for the water content of 4 wt% was about twice as large as that of 2 wt%. The induced shear stress for the temperature of 80°C was about 15 times as large as that of 20°C. Dielectric properties were measured to elucidate the mechanism of electrorheology. In order for an ER fluid to have large ER effect, relaxation frequency of the ER fluid should be between 100 and 105 Hz and the difference of the dielectric constant below and above the relaxation frequency (Δ∊′) must be large, which we refer to as the dielectric property mechanism. The relation between measured ER effect and dielectric property mechanism was discussed.
REAL CONTINUATION FROM THE COMPLEX QUADRATIC FAMILY: FIXED-POINT BIFURCATION SETS
Authors: PECKHAM BRUCE B. , MONTALDI JAMES 
Published: July 2002

This paper is primarily a numerical study of the fixed-point bifurcation loci — saddle-node, period-doubling and Hopf bifurcations — present in the family: [Formula: see text] where z is a complex dynamic (phase) variable, [Formula: see text] its complex conjugate, and C and A are complex parameters. We treat the parameter C as a primary parameter and A as a secondary parameter, asking how the bifurcation loci projected to the C plane change as the auxiliary parameter A is varied. For A=0, the resulting two-real-parameter family is a familiar one-complex-parameter quadratic family, and the local fixed-point bifurcation locus is the main cardioid of the Mandlebrot set. For A ≠ 0, the resulting two-real-parameter families are not complex analytic, but are still analytic (quadratic) when viewed as a map of ℛ2. Saddle-node and period-doubling loci evolve from points on the main cardioid for A=0 into closed curves for A ≠ 0. As A is varied further from 0 in the complex plane, the three sets interact in a variety of interesting ways. More generally, we discuss bifurcations of families of maps with some parameters designated as primary and the rest as auxiliary. The auxiliary parameter space is then divided into equivalence classes with respect to a specified set of bifurcation loci. This equivalence is defined by the existence of a diffeomorphism of corresponding primary parameter spaces which preserves the specified set of specified bifurcation loci. In our study there is a huge amount of complexity added by specifying the three fixed-point bifurcation loci together, rather than one at a time. We also provide a preliminary classification of the types of codimension-one bifurcations one should expect in general studies of families of two-parameter families of maps of the plane. Comments on numerical continuation techniques are provided as well.
BOUNDARY OF CAT(-1) COXETER GROUPS
Authors: BENAKLI N. 
Published: July 2002

In this paper, we study the topological properties of the hyperbolic boundaries of CAT(-1) Coxeter groups of virtual cohomological dimension 2. We will show how these properties are related to combinatorial properties of the associated Coxeter graph. More precisely, we investigate the connectedness, the local connectedness and the existence problem of local cut points. In the appendix, in a joint work with Z. Sela, we will construct the JSJ decomposition of the Coxeter groups for which the corresponding Coxeter graphs are complete bipartite graphs.
A NEURAL NETWORK MODEL TO INDEX MEDICAL IMAGES
Authors: CRÉPUT JEAN-CHARLES , CARON ARMAND 
Published: July 2002

With the development of computer capabilities, memories and network abilities, we need more efficient and robust algorithms to manage databases and to store and retrieve the relevant information for the user. The aim of this work is to automate the construction of a neural network Information Retrieval System (IRS) adapted to a medical image database. The user builds queries and the system must retrieve the relevant documents or images. Queries are groups of keywords or items associated with relevant images. In our approach, the set of queries and the binary relevance judgments on the documents constitute complex learning data associations. There are two phases in the automatic construction of the IRS. The indexing phase builds the learning data base and then a specific learning algorithm builds the neural network. For the system to be able to immediately learn these complex data, we have developed a new specific algorithm. It allows a perfect learning of a binary logical table in a stepwise fashion without forgetting the previously learnt logical combinations. Furthermore, this algorithm works very quickly and leads to a parallel implementation for large databases.
ATOMIC STRUCTURES OF A Cu(111) SURFACE UNDER ELECTROCHEMICAL CONDITIONS: AN IN-SITU STM STUDY
Authors: BROEKMANN P. , WILMS M. , WANDELT K. 
Published: July 2002

The atomic structures of a Cu(111) electrode in dilute sulfuric electrolyte have been studied using in-situ STM. At anodic potentials near the copper dissolution the adsorbed sulfate anions form a characteristic anisotropic Moiré pattern. The appearance of the long range Moiré modulation is explained by a sulfate-induced reconstruction (expansion) of the topmost copper layer and the resulting misfit between the first and the second copper layer. For the first time it was possible to image not only the sulfate adsorbate but also the underlying reconstructed copper substrate at the same anodic working potential by a systematical variation of the tunneling parameters. On an atomic scale the observed sulfate structure on Cu(111) is very similar to those found for other fcc(111) surfaces (Au, Pt and Rh). On these electrodes sulfate anions form a regular [Formula: see text] superstructure. For the Cu(111) surface a [Formula: see text]-like unit cell is found which is slightly distorted. Also for the first time it was possible to image the atomic structure of an electrode during a massive hydrogen evolution current at cathodic potentials. Even under such extreme electrochemical conditions far from the thermodynamic equilibrium an ordered superstructure of hydronium cations is found. At the anodic end of the cyclic voltammogram a pit-etching mechanism is induced by a fast copper corrosion.
HEDGING STRATEGY WITH LANGEVIN EVOLUTION
Authors: MARIANI S. , ROTUNDO G. , TIROZZI B. 
Published: July 2002

In recent years there has been much attention paid to pricing and hedging models that are more general than the Black and Scholes' one, whose hypotheses often aren't satisfied by true market data. Sato and Takayasu proposed a market model that can produce price fluctuations with infinite variance from a deterministic behaviour of many market's dealers as it emerged from their simulations. We check the possibility to apply this model to an Italian stock, the "Assicurazioni Generali" and determine the density function of the multiplicative and additive noise appearing in the proposed Langevin equation. We find also the Lévy distribution for the changes. This distribution is consistent with the histograms and the Kernel estimates. These results are used for hedging following the approach of Sornette and Bouchaud.
Converting thread-level parallelism to instruction-level parallelism via simultaneous multithreading
Authors: Lo Jack L. , Emer Joel S. , Levy Henry M. , Stamm Rebecca L. , Tullsen Dean M. , Eggers S. J. 
Published: July 2002

To achieve high performance, contemporary computer systems rely on two forms of parallelism: instruction-level parallelism (ILP) and thread-level parallelism (TLP). Wide-issue super-scalar processors exploit ILP by executing multiple instructions from a single program in a single cycle. Multiprocessors (MP) exploit TLP by executing different threads in parallel on different processors. Unfortunately, both parallel processing styles statically partition processor resources, thus preventing them from adapting to dynamically changing levels of ILP and TLP in a program. With insufficient TLP, processors in an MP will be idle; with insufficient ILP, multiple-issue hardware on a superscalar is wasted. This article explores parallel processing on an alternative architecture, simultaneous multithreading (SMT), which allows multiple threads to complete for and share all of the processor's resources every cycle.The most compelling reason for running parallel applications on an SMT processor is its ability to use thread-level parallelism and instruction-level parallelism interchangeably. By permitting multiple threads to share the processor's functional units simultaneously, the processor can use both ILP and TLP to accommodate variations in parallelism. When a program has only a single thread, all of the SMT processor's resources can be dedicated to that thread; when more TLP exists, this parallelism can compensate for a lack of per-thread ILP.We examine two alternative on-chip parallel architectures for the next generation of processors. We compare SMT and small-scale, on-chip multiprocessors in their ability to exploit both ILP and TLP. First, we identify the hardware bottlenecks that prevent multiprocessors from effectively exploiting ILP. Then, we show that because of its dynamic resource sharing, SMT avoids these inefficiencies and benefits from being able to run more threads on a single processor. The use of TLP is especially advantageous when per-thread ILP is limited. The ease of adding additional thread contexts on an SMT (relative to adding additional processors on an MP) allows simultaneous multithreading to expose more parallelism, further increasing functional unit utilization and attaining a 52% average speedup (versus a four-processor, single-chip multiprocessor with comparable execution resources). This study also addresses an often-cited concern regarding the use of thread-level parallelism or multithreading: interference in the memory system and branch prediction hardware.We find the multiple threads cause interthread interference in the caches and place greater demands on the memory system, thus increasing average memory latencies. By exploiting threading-level parallelism, however, SMT hides these additional latencies, so that they only have a small impact on total program performance. We also find that for parallel applications, the additional threads have minimal effects on branch prediction.
A genealogy of control structures
Authors: Ledgard Henry F. , Marcotty Michael 
Published: July 2002

The issue of program control structures has had a history of heated controversy. To put this issue on a solid footing, this paper reviews numerous theoretical results on control structures and explores their practical implications.
The classic result of Böhm and Jacopini on the theoretical completeness of if-then-else and while-do is discussed. Several recent ideas on control structures are then explored. These include a review of various other control structures, results on time/space limitations, and theorems relating the relative power of control structures under several notions of equivalence.
In conclusion, the impact of theoretical results on the practicing programmer and the importance of one-in, one-out control structures as operational abstractions are discussed. It is argued further that there is insufficient evidence to warrant more than if-then-else, while-do, and their variants.