bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
An “alternative finger” in robotic-assisted thoracic surgery: intraoperative ultrasound localization of pulmonary nodules
Authors: Zhou Zhenyu , Wang Zhitian , Zheng Zhelan , Cao Jinlin , Zhang Chong , He Zhehao , Lv Wang , Hu Jian 
Published: July 2017

Aim: Robotic-assisted thoracic surgery (RATS) has become a promising treatment for pulmonary neoplasms. During RATS, intraoperative ultrasonography can act as an “alternative finger” to “touch” and locate lesions, especially pulmonary nodules. This study was aimed to investigate the efficacy of intraoperative ultrasonographic localization during da Vinci RATS procedures.Material and methods: Patients with pulmonary nodules were randomly divided into an Experimental Group and Control Group in which nodules were respectively located using intraoperative ultrasonography or by the surgeon’s anatomic knowledge. The success rates and relevant localization factors were compared between the groups and analyzed to conclude the efficacy of intraoperative ultrasonography. Additionally, the intraoperative ultrasonography learning curve was analyzed to evaluate each surgeon’s ability to independently perform intraoperative ultrasonography.Results: Thirty-four patients were included in the study (n = 17/group). Respectively, the Experimental Group and Control Group comprised 41.2% and 58.9% women (p= 0.937), and had average ages of 55.5 and 55.8 years. In the Experimental group, ultrasonographic localization for mixed ground-glass nodules with CT values of -500 to -100 Hounsfield units had an efficacy of 87.5%. By contrast, the localization efficacy in Control Group was 20.0% (p=0.032).A single surgeon without prior experience performed intraoperative ultrasonography in 20 cases, and the latter 10 procedures required significantly less time relative to the former 10 procedures (p=0.000).Conclusions: During RATS, the use of intraoperative ultrasonography as an “alternative finger” to “touch” and findthe accurate location of pulmonary nodules, especially mixed ground-glass nodules, is warranted.
Capturing effort and recovery: reactive and recuperative cortisol responses to competition in well-trained rowers
Authors: Kallen Victor L , Stubbe Janine H , Zwolle Henk Jan , Valk Pierre 
Published: July 2017

Background/aimIt is well known that physical strain is associated with increased cortisol production. And although mental stress elevates cortisol concentrations as well, little is known of the independent and/or combined effects of both on the secretion of cortisol. Aim of the study was to investigate the day-to-day cortisol dynamics associated with training, performance and recuperation and the immediate responses to mental stress and physical endurance under competitive conditions.MethodsSixteen freshmen competitive male rowers were prospectively followed from Thursday to Tuesday with an intermediate competition on Saturday and Sunday. On all days, three saliva samples were collected within 30 min after awakening to assess the cortisol awakening rise (CAR). Additionally, five saliva samples were collected previously to and immediately after all races during the regatta weekend.ResultsCAR values peaked during competition days and recovered during the 2 days after. Cortisol concentrations significantly increased during and after all races. Furthermore, although response patterns did not differ, the morning races showed significantly higher cortisol levels compared with the levels measured during the afternoon races. This likely reflects the normal diurnal rhythm of corticosteroids.ConclusionsThese results indicate that cortisol levels of athletes might be sensitive for both immediate responses to competition and, in case of CAR, (midterm) recovery phasing. Consequently, monitoring cortisol responses during training and competition may provide valuable information regarding how athletes cope with competition-induced stress and their recovery status during the days following. This insight might help to plan future training loads and recovery.
Assessing the use of magnetic resonance imaging virtopsy as an alternative to autopsy: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Authors: Ahmad Mohammad Usman , Sharif Kamal Ali , Qayyum Haisum , Ehsanullah Bushra , Balyasnikova Svetlana , Wale Anita , Shanmuganandan Arun , Siddiqui Muhammed Rafay Sameem , Athanasiou Thanos , Kemp Graham John 
Published: July 2017

ABSTRACTBackgroundThe post mortem examination or autopsy is a trusted method of identifying the cause of death. Patients and their families may oppose an autopsy for a variety of reasons, including fear of mutilation or owing to religious and personal beliefs. Imaging alternatives to autopsy have been explored, which may provide a viable alternative.ObjectiveTo explore the possibility of using MRI virtopsy to establish the cause of death as an alternative to the traditional post mortem examination or autopsy.MethodsSystematic review was carried out of all studies, without language restriction, identified from Medline, Cochrane (1960–2016) and Embase (1991–2016) up to December 2016. Further searches were performed using the bibliographies of articles and abstracts. All studies reporting the diagnosis of the cause of death by both MRI virtopsy and traditional autopsy were included.ResultsFive studies with 107 patients, contributed to a summative quantitative outcome in adults. The combined sensitivity of MRI virtopsy was 0.82 (95% CI 0.56 to 0.94) with a diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) of 11.1 (95% CI 2.2 to 57.0). There was no significant heterogeneity between studies (Q=1.96, df=4, p=0.75, I2=0). Eight studies, with 953 patients contributed to a summative quantitative outcome in children. The combined sensitivity of MRI virtopsy was 0.73 (95% CI 0.59 to 0.84) with a DOR of 6.44 (95% CI 1.36 to 30.51). There was significant heterogeneity between studies (Q=34.95, df=7, p&lt;0.01, I2=80).ConclusionMRI virtopsy may offer a viable alternative to traditional autopsy. By using MRI virtopsy, a potential cost reduction of at least 33% is feasible, and therefore ought to be considered in eligible patients.
Disorder induced lifetime effects in binary disordered systems: A first principles formalism and an application to disordered graphene
Authors: Sadhukhan Banasree , Bandyopadhyay Subhadeep , Nayak Arabinda , Mookerjee Abhijit 
Published: July 2017

In this work, the conducting properties of graphene lattice with a particular concentration of defect (5% and 10%) has been studied. The real space block recursion method introduced by Haydock et al. has been used in presence of the random distribution of defects in graphene. This Green function based method is found to be more powerful than the usual reciprocal based methods which need artificial periodicity. Different resonant states appear because of the presence of topological and local defects are studied within the framework of Green function.
Evaluation of the EUMETSAT Global AVHRR Wind Product
Authors: Horváth Ákos , Hautecoeur Olivier , Borde Régis , Deneke Hartwig , Buehler Stefan A. 
Published: July 2017

AbstractThe European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) MetOp-A and MetOp-B satellites fly in the same polar orbit with a 180° phase difference, which enables the global retrieval of atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs, or “winds”) by tracking clouds in a pair of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) infrared-window-channel images taken successively by the tandem platforms within their swath overlap area. This novel global wind product has been operational since 2015. As part of ongoing validation efforts, two months of MetOp global AMVs were compared with a suite of independent wind data, including AMVs from geostationary and polar-orbiter satellites as well as radiosonde and model winds. The performance of the new wind product is generally comparable to that of more established satellite winds. In the tropics, however, high-level MetOp global AMVs show a strong fast speed bias, increased root-mean-square difference, and considerably reduced speed correlation relative to all comparison datasets—an as-yet-unexplained drop in retrieval quality that warrants further investigation. A best-fit wind analysis also indicates that selectively applied height adjustments, such as cloud-base and inversion methods, can be a significant source of discrepancy, leading to very poor height correlation among low-level satellite AMVs. Height assignment is more consistent and better correlated at mid- to high levels, although MetOp heights derived from window-channel brightness temperatures have a bias toward lower heights because of the lack of semitransparency corrections. Collocated Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer CO2-slicing heights significantly improve the best-fit height-difference statistics at higher altitudes but are available for only ~5% of MetOp AMVs.
Test Calibration for Categorical Classification
Authors: Betts Gilbert L. 
Published: July 2017

The need for having tests calibrated on a quality scale arises from difficulties encountered in the classification of borderline personnel into predetermined categories. The proposed scale was studied experimentally from a succession of differently spaced criterion groups. As thus studied, its characteristics indicated that it was admirably suited for the purpose contemplated. The practicability of the scale was verified through actual use. A new test, called the Biographical Case History, was constructed, calibrated by reference to two contrasting criterion groups, and used successfully for measurement and classification purposes. The nature of further applications that may be made was illustrated.
Integrating Placement with the Student Personnel Program
Authors: Johnson Norman A. 
Published: July 2017

If we are to do more than merely acknowledge placement as an essential student personnel service, and if we are to do more than merely give “lip” service to the need for integration, then I firmly believe that the following prerequisites must be met: 1. That the responsibility for placement services must be definitely assigned. 2. That the individuals charged with the administration or coordination of placement services be responsible to the office having over-all administration and coordination of all student personnel services. 3. That there be qualified personnel to discharge effectively the duties and responsibilities incident to placement and follow-up services. An attempt has been made in this presentation to indicate the limitations, from the point of view of integration, of a placement program dependent entirely on the efforts of individual instructional departments, schools or colleges within an institution. This was in reference, of course, to those institutions in which there were no central placement or coordinating offices. If the foregoing prerequisites have been met, then it would seem relatively easy to identify areas of integration as well as to develop specific techniques of integrating placement with the student personnel program. Admittedly, I may have been thinking in terms of perhaps the “ideal” or the optimum program, but should we set our sights any lower?
The Reading of Messages of Different Types and Numbers of Syllables Under Conditions of Delayed Side-Tone
Authors: Black John W. 
Published: July 2017

Eight sets of phrases were constructed for oral reading. Two sets were comprised of five syllables, in one instance consonant-vowel syllables and in the other, vowel-consonant. Three sets were made to include only syllables of two, three, or four sounds and a total of either 15 or 16 sounds. Three additional sets were the same as the preceding ones except that the total number of sounds was either 20 or 21. Each group of twenty-four young male adults read a set of the phrases under 12 conditions of delayed side-tone ranging from zero delay to 0.30 sec. delay. The duration of the oral phrase was measured. The reading of phrases of vowel-consonant syllables was more adversely affected by delayed side-tone than was the reading of consonant-vowel syllables, and the disparity between the two increased as the amount of delay of side-tone was increased to 0.21 sec. Otherwise syllables and phrases of different lengths were responded to “alike,” there being no interaction between the amount of delay of side-tone and the structure of the phrase.
The Predictability of Words in Context and the Length of Pauses in Speech
Authors: Goldman-Eisler Frieda 
Published: July 2017

Fluency and hesitation in spontaneous speech have previously been shown to be symptomatic of variations in word transition probability. The purpose of the present experiment was to corroborate this conclusion by evidence demonstrating the influence of transition probability (amount of information) on selective behaviour stimulated in an experimental situation. An experiment in sentence completion was designed in such a way as to recreate the conditions for word selection in sentences. As a result word transition probability was shown to be related not only to incidence but also to the length of hesitation pauses within sentences. The completion of gaps substituted for words that had originally been preceded by pauses required a significantly longer period of hesitation than the completion of gaps substituted for words which had been uttered fluently. A relation was thus shown to exist between periods of hesitation before verbalisation in different persons performing different operations within the same linguistic setting. The conditions under which this relation has been shown to hold have been found to be those of successful anticipation of the original speaker's intentions.
Fricative and Plosive Perception-Identification as a Function of Phonetic Context in CVCVC Utterance
Authors: Treon Martin A. 
Published: July 2017

Hypothesis: The largest perceptual influence unit (PIU) for consonant perception-identification is of larger than syllable size and at least of the size CVCVC. The PIU is defined as that number of two or more successive speech sounds which influence the perception-identification of a given sound within that sequence. Each of twenty listeners attempted to identify the centrally occurring consonant /p t k b d g f s ∫ v z / in each of 576 CVCVC nonsense utterances occurring in white noise. The vowel context included combinations of /i α u/ while the outside consonants were both either /θ/ or /m/. Results indicated that plosive and non-sibilant fricative intelligibility varied significantly as a function of trans-consonantal vowel interaction (V C V). Furthermore trans-vowel consonant influence (C V C and/or C V C) significantly affected the intelligibility of almost all of the stimulus sounds. This latter finding, considered together with the former, clearly supports the proposed hypothesis.
Comparison of Sensitivity to the Surface and Deep Structure of Sentences in Children
Authors: Trembath Alexis A. 
Published: July 2017

Passages of connected discourse followed by a test sentence and a further twenty syllables of discourse were played to sixty six-year-old children. At the end of each passage the test sentence was played in one of four forms: (i) identical, (ii) with its deep structure changed and surface structure maintained, (iii) as in (ii) but the meaning of the new sentence out of line with the sense of the passage, (iv) with its surface structure changed but deep structure maintained. Subjects were asked to say whether the test sentence was the same as or different from the one in the passage. Treatment of (ii), (iii) and (iv) sentences was significantly different from that of (i), i.e., some changes were detected. Type (iv) changes were hardest to detect and type (iii) changes were detected most often. The children were more sensitive to deep structure than to surface structure changes.
Bantu Messiah and White Christ
Authors: Sundkler Bengt 
Published: July 2017

“There is one thing, we sometimes wonder about,” he said, and hurriedly pulled his brown knitted hat down over his wrinkled forehead. The speaker was Theophilus M., a Zulu journalist and editor of an African newspaper, an intensive thirty year-old African intellectual, intelligent, quick-witted and with wide contacts among present-day Africans. “We wonder sometimes,” he repeated thoughtfully, whether we might not have got the wrong God. It might have been better if we had had our own God.” I thought for a moment about the Christian name which he had been given in Holy Baptism — for he was a Christian and, in common with the entire modem generation of African intellectuals the continent over, had been to the mission school. It was not a Bantu name, but a foreign name, a Greek name, Theophilus — ‘Loved by God.’ Yes, but loved by which god? Could it be the white man's God, when the chasm between white and black was yawning wider and wider with every passing day, in an apartheid-ruled South Africa? He took me with him to the Africans' own church, a cold and draughty little shack — this was in June, winter in Johannesburg. A layman was preaching and quoted Matt. 25: 1–3: “So shall it be with the Kingdom of Heaven, as when ten virgins took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five were white and five were black. The whites took their lamps with them, but forgot to take any oil. But the blacks took oil with them in their vessels…. At last they came and shouted, ‘Lord, open the door for us!’ But he answered and said, “Verily, I say unto you, I know you not!’”
Rheology of Refractory Coating Materials Used in Lost Foam Casting Process
Authors: Bakhtiyarov Sayavur I. , Overfelt Ruel A. 
Published: July 2017

The results of the experimental study of Theological and thermal properties of two refractory coating materials are presented in this paper. Although both coatings exhibit non-Newtonian shear and thermal thickening fluid flow behavior, one of them obeys the Casson theological model over the shear rate range investigated. Its parameters related to product performance and composition variations (limiting high-shear viscosity and yield point) are determined as a function of temperature. The theological data of the other type refractory coating are well fit the linear fluidity model. The parameters (limiting fluidity and structural fluidity coefficient) required to characterize the rheology of this coating against temperature are presented. A significant viscoelasticity of this refractory coating material was demonstrated using a jet thrust measurement technique. The relaxation times of this material as a function of shear rate and temperature are presented.
DSC Study of Morphological Changes in Segmented Polyurethane Elastomers
Authors: Bajsic E. Govorcin , Rek V. , Sendijarevic A. , Sendijarevic V. , Frisch K. C. 
Published: July 2017

Annealing studies were carried out to investigate the morphological changes in segmented polyurethane elastomers (PUR) induced by annealing as a function of temperature. Four series of PUR elastomers were studied by varying the hard segment type (MDI/BD and H12MDI/BD), the content of the hard segment (35-57% by weight), the soft segment type (PTMO and PCL) and the soft segment molecular weight (PTMO 1000 and 2000, PCL 1250). Differential scanning calorimetry analyses, DSC, of these materials provided information about morphological changes during annealing at various temperatures (70, 130, 160 and 180°C). The effects of annealing process are visible in PUR elastomers based on the aromatic (MDI/BD) isocyanate and those based on the cycloaliphatic (H12MDI/BD) isocyanate. The values of the soft segment glass transition temperature ( T g) decreased on the higher annealing temperatures in PUR elastomers based on the aromatic isocyanate and on the cycloaliphatic isocyanate. This behaviour was connecting with better phase separation after annealing in both PUR elastomers. A comparison of thermal results shows that the MDI/BD series elastomers exhibit a considerable degree of hard segment crystallinity whereas the H12MDI/BD series elastomers are amorphous. Analyses of the DSC results indicate that increasing of the hard segment content leads to higher T g values for control samples and samples after annealing, except for some samples whose T g decreased after annealing at higher temperatures. This behaviour results from partial compatibility and therefore phase mixing of soft and hard segments. Endotherms due to the ordering in the hard segment domains appeared at higher temperature. The T g of PUR elastomers based on polyether's soft segment phase increased with annealing process. The opposite effect was obtained in PUR elastomers based on polyester's soft segments. The same effect was obtained for elastomers with higher hard segment content. The results showed that the soft segment T g decreased with increased molecular weight of the soft segments (PTMO 2000). This indicates that the greater degree of phase separation was allowed by the longer soft segment lengths. Endotherms resulting from hard segment ordering appeared at higher temperatures for higher annealing temperatures.
Classification of Australian Oil Shales
Authors: Hutton Adrian C. 
Published: July 2017

Oil shales, a possible additional source of liquid hydrocarbons for Australia, contain abundant organic matter that is best described using coal maceral terminology. Liptinite is the dominant maceral in all the oil shales and the type and abundance of liptinite is used to divide the oil shales into cannel coal, torbanite, lamosite, marinite and tasminite. The oil shales are formed in lakes associated with peat swamps, fresh to brackish water lakes and shallow oceans. The present status of each of the five types of Australian oil shales is reviewed.
Interpretation of the Geochemistry of Oils of Taranaki and West Coast Region, Western New Zealand
Authors: Cook Richard A. 
Published: July 2017

The predominant hydrocarbons produced in the Taranaki Basin are gas condensates, although oil has been discovered at several widespread locations and therefore remains a priority exploration objective. Study of the oil geochemistry by means of bulk chemical characteristics, isotope and biomarker content improves our understanding of their source rocks and maturation histories. Results show that the oils and condensates throughout the region are similar in their bulk chemical character, source environment and levels of maturation suggesting a common source for all the hydrocarbons. The source environments as indicated by biomarkers were terrestrial fresh water swamps with low bacterial anoxic conditions. The primary plant material deposited was vascular plant debris, and onshore in northern Taranaki and in the Murchison Basin, angiosperm debris was an important additional component. These angiosperm indicators are absent from the West Coast and southeastern Taranaki oils and condenstates. The overall environment of the oil sources rocks is similar to that which formed the high volatile coals of the West Coast. These coals, on source rock analyses, also reveal a perhydrous character equivalent to the high hydrogen index normally associated with marine oil source rocks. Maturation levels of the oils, equivalent to a vitrinite reflectance level of Ro 1.0% are indicated by biomarkers. The highest maturation levels reached by drilling so far are 0.9%. suggesting that oil source rocks in Taranaki Basin are at or below the maximum drilled depth of 5.5 km. After generation, the oils of the West Coast were slightly biodegraded as suggested by their low paraffin wax content. However, valid biomarker interpretations for source and maturation conditions are still possible. The widespread occurrences of oil and the consistent nature of the detailed chemistry of the oils suggest that in addition to gas condensate there is a reasonable prospectivity for oil especially in and adjacent to the Central Graben are of the Taranaki Basin and in parts of the West Coast.