bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Prediction of the 14 June 2010 Oklahoma City Extreme Precipitation and Flooding Event in a Multiphysics Multi-Initial-Conditions Storm-Scale Ensemble Forecasting System
Authors: Dahl Nathan , Xue Ming 
Published: June 2016

AbstractProlonged heavy rainfall produced widespread flooding in the Oklahoma City area early on 14 June 2010. This event was poorly predicted by operational models; however, it was skillfully predicted by the Storm-Scale Ensemble Forecast produced by the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms as part of the Hazardous Weather Testbed 2010 Spring Experiment. In this study, the quantitative precipitation forecast skill of ensemble members is assessed and ranked using a neighborhood-based threat score calculated against the stage IV precipitation data, and Oklahoma Mesonet observations are used to evaluate the forecast skill for surface conditions. Statistical correlations between skill metrics and qualitative comparisons of relevant features for higher- and lower-ranked members are used to identify important processes. The results demonstrate that the development of a cold pool from previous convection and the movement and orientation of the associated outflow boundary played dominant roles in the event. Without assimilated radar data from this earlier convection, the modeled cold pool was too weak and too slow to develop. Furthermore, forecast skill was sensitive to the choice of microphysics parameterization; members that used the Thompson scheme produced initial cold pools that propagated too slowly, substantially increasing errors in the timing and placement of later precipitation. The results also suggest important roles played by finescale, transient features in the period of outflow boundary stalling and reorientation associated with the heaviest rainfall. The unlikelihood of a deterministic forecast reliably predicting these features highlights the benefit of using convection-allowing/convection-resolving ensemble forecast methods for events of this kind.
Multidimensional Profiling of Task Stress States for Human Factors
Authors: Matthews Gerald 
Published: June 2016

Objective: This article advocates multidimensional assessment of task stress in human factors and reviews the use of the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire (DSSQ) for evaluation of systems and operators. Background: Contemporary stress research has progressed from an exclusive focus on environmental stressors to transactional perspectives on the stress process. Performance impacts of stress reflect the operator’s dynamic attempts to understand and cope with task demands. Multidimensional stress assessments are necessary to gauge the different forms of system-operator interaction. Method: This review discusses the theoretical and practical use of the DSSQ in evaluating multidimensional patterns of stress response. It presents psychometric evidence for the multidimensional perspective and illustrative profiles of subjective state response to task stressors and environments. Evidence is also presented on stress state correlations with related variables, including personality, stress process measures, psychophysiological response, and objective task performance. Results: Evidence supports the validity of the DSSQ as a task stress measure. Studies of various simulated environments show that different tasks elicit different profiles of stress state response. Operator characteristics such as resilience predict individual differences in state response to stressors. Structural equation modeling may be used to understand performance impacts of stress states. Conclusion: Multidimensional assessment affords insight into the stress process in a variety of human factors contexts. Integrating subjective and psychophysiological assessment is a priority for future research. Application: Stress state measurement contributes to evaluating system design, countermeasures to stress and fatigue, and performance vulnerabilities. It may also support personnel selection and diagnostic monitoring of operators.
Frailty assessment to predict short term outcomes after cardiac surgery
Authors: Marshall Lachlan , Griffin Rayleene , Mundy Julie 
Published: June 2016

Background Frailty has been used to predict outcome in gerontology but has only recently been applied to measures of perioperative risk stratification. It provides information on physiological reserve not addressed by current scoring systems which are heavily reliant on age. Methods We enrolled 123 patients over 70-years old (mean age 77.1 years, 69% male) undergoing open cardiac surgery, and assessed in 11 different frailty measures. These were combined into a cumulative score that was stratified into robust (49%), borderline (37%), and frail (14%) groups. The groups were compared for a short-term composite measure comprising mortality, deep sternal wound infection, inter-facility discharge or prolonged length of stay, as well as 3-month mortality and quality of life and 6-month mortality. Results Frail patients had a considerably higher incidence of an unfavorable composite outcome (52.9%) compared to their borderline (28.3%) and robust (13.3%) counterparts ( p = 0.003). Hospital mortality was 4/123 (3.3%) with a further 3 within 30 days, and 2 late deaths occurred within 6 months postoperatively. This was statistically significant with greater mortality at 6 months in the frail cohort. Quality of life at 3 months showed a trend towards greater improvement in the borderline patients compared to either the robust or frail groups. Discussion Frailty status impacts on both short- and intermediate-term outcomes, including postoperative quality of life. In an ageing population where nonmaleficence and resource allocation are increasingly important, individual assessment in marginal surgical candidates may provide additional information to both the patient and clinician.
The optimal starting point for survival time in pulmonary metastasectomy
Authors: Kamiyoshihara Mitsuhiro , Igai Hitoshi , Ibe Takashi , Kawatani Natsuko , Yoshikawa Ryohei 
Published: June 2016

Aim Studies of metastatic lung cancer have used various starting points for calculating the survival period, including the time of primary tumor resection and the first and final pulmonary metastasectomy. This study examined differences in prognostic factors according to the starting point used to calculate survival time. Methods We performed surgical resection of pulmonary metastases in 202 consecutive patients between 1999 and 2013. Of these, 146 (excluding overlapping cases) underwent pulmonary metastasectomy. We examined the survival period after resection in patients with pulmonary metastases (group M) and primary tumors (group P). The prognostic influence of variables on survival was analyzed. Results The 5-year survival rate was 76.7% in group P and 62.0% in group M. The significant prognostic factors were the disease-free interval (>1 and >2 years) in group P, and maximum tumor diameter in group M. Interestingly, multivariate analysis showed that the significant prognostic factors (age and nodule diameter) were identical in both groups. Conclusions We believe that the potential confounding factors were counterbalanced by the effect of prognostic factors on multivariate analysis in patients undergoing pulmonary metastasectomy. If the survival period is defined as starting from the time of the primary tumor resection, this may resolve the variance in survival, because pulmonary metastasectomy is only one option among several available treatments.
Magnetic resonance imaging of degenerative changes of the posterior cruciate ligament
Authors: Draghi Ferdinando , Bortolotto Chandra , Coscia Davide Renato , Canepari Mario , Gitto Salvatore 
Published: June 2016

Background Mucoid degeneration and ganglia reflect a continuum of degenerative changes within the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL). Purpose To assess the prevalence of and radiologists’ familiarity with PCL mucoid degeneration and ganglia. Material and Methods Knee magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) from July 2013 to June 2015, excluding patients who had a preceding trauma or MRI findings indicative of a prior injury, were retrospectively reviewed, with the specific request to assess degenerative changes of the PCL, by the same musculoskeletal radiologists who previously reported these examinations, and one fellow. Results A total of 692 patients entered this study. The radiologists and the fellow together identified mucoid degeneration in 34 patients (4.9%), ganglia in 14 patients (2.0%), and both in four patients (0.6%). Several patterns of PCL mucoid degeneration were identified: diffuse thickening in seven patients, partial thickening in 16 (four associated with a ganglion), longitudinal intraligamentous PCL signal-intensity abnormalities resembling a “tram track” in 15. In all cases there was increased signal intensity on fluid-sensitive sequences. In the previous reports, only three cases of PCL mucoid degeneration out of 38 (7.9%) were described, with intraligamentous PCL signal-intensity abnormalities. In the reports of the patients with degeneration and ganglia, only ganglia were described. In the previous reports, ganglia were correctly diagnosed. Conclusion Mucoid degeneration of the PCL is much more common than previously assumed and is underestimated by radiologists.
Tim-3 suppression combined with TLR3 activation enhances antiviral immune response in patients with chronic HCV infection
Authors: Nan Yue-min , Su Shan-shan , Niu Xue-min , Zhao Su-xian , Zhang Yu-guo , Wang Rong-qi , Kong Ling-bo , He Huan , Zheng Huan-wei , Sun Dian-xing 
Published: June 2016

Objective To investigate the regulation mechanism of T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-3 (Tim-3) combined with toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) or TLR4 on antiviral immune and inflammatory response in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Methods Patients with chronic HCV infection and healthy control subjects were recruited. Patients received interferon (IFN)-α based therapy. Plasma galectin-9 (Gal-9) was quantitated. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were cultured with TLR3 or TLR4 agonists, alone or in combination with Tim-3 antagonist. Levels of IFN-α, TNF-α, and 2′-5′ oligoadenylate synthetase (2′-5′OAS), myxovirus resistance protein A (MxA) and suppressor of cytokine 1 (SOCS1) RNA in PBMC cultures were evaluated. Results Plasma Gal-9 levels were increased in patients ( n = 52) compared with controls ( n = 20) and significantly declined at treatment week 12 and 24 weeks post-treatment. IFN-α, 2′-5′OAS, MxA, TNF-α and SOCS1 were upregulated by TLR3 and TLR4 agonists. TNF-α and SOCS1 levels were suppressed by the addition of Tim-3 antagonist. Conclusions Tim-3 blockade in combination with TLR activation induces the expression of antiviral molecules without a significant increase in TNF-α or SOCS1.
On roughness-induced adhesion enhancement
Authors: Ciavarella M 
Published: June 2016

While adhesion reduction due to roughness is not surprising, roughness induced adhesion remained a puzzle until recently. Guduru and coworkers have shown a very convincing mechanism to explain both the increase of strength and of toughness in a sphere with a concentric single scale of waviness. Kesari and coworkers later showed some very elegant convenient asymptotic expansions of Guduru’s solution. This enhancement is very high and indeed, using Kesari’s solution, it is here shown to depend uniquely on a Johnson parameter for adhesion of a sinusoidal contact. However, counterintuitively, it leads to unbounded enhancement for conditions of large roughness for which the Johnson parameter is very low. Guduru postulated that this enhancement should occur after sufficiently large pressure has been applied to any spherical contact. Also, although the enhancement is limited to the Johnson, Kendall and Roberts (JKR) regime of large soft materials with high adhesion, the DMT limit for the smooth sphere is found otherwise. However, for hard materials, even the Derjaguin, Muller and Toporov (DMT) limit for the smooth solids is very hard to observe, which suggests that adhesion reduction is also not yet well understood. The limitations of the assumption of simply connected area are here further discussed, and a well-known model for hard particles in contact with rough planes due to Rumpf is used to show that, in the range where an unbounded increase is predicted, orders of magnitude reduction is instead expected for rigid solids. We suggest that Guduru’s model may be close to an upper bound for adhesion of rough bodies, while the Rumpf–Rabinovich model may be close to a lower bound.
Successful evaluation of cognitive function and the nature of cognitive deficits among people with schizophrenia in clinical rehabilitation settings
Authors: John Alexander Panickacheril , Yeak Kim , Ayres Helen , Sevastos Marie , Moore Elizabeth 
Published: June 2016

Objectives: Despite possessing considerable relevance for planning and delivery of effective rehabilitation interventions, systematic evaluation of cognitive function is often ignored in clinical practice. This paper describes a successful method for measuring cognitive function and the nature of cognitive deficits (CD) in people with schizophrenia admitted to psychiatric rehabilitation services. Methods: Data on the cognitive functioning of consecutive patients with schizophrenia / schizoaffective disorder admitted during a 5-year period to a public in-patient rehabilitation facility was collated retrospectively and analysed. The Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS) was used to evaluate cognitive function. Results: It was possible to administer the BACS to 122 of 135 consecutive admissions. The mean composite score on the BACS was 1.8 standard deviations below the norm, and 43% had moderate or severe CD. The BACS sub-tests of list learning and symbol coding revealed more severe deficits. Conclusions: The study indicates that evaluation of cognitive function using brief instruments is feasible in psychiatric rehabilitation settings. Global and domain-specific CD were prevalent among people with schizophrenia. In view of the strong association of cognitive functioning with community functioning and rehabilitation outcomes, further studies exploring the feasibility and utility of routinely evaluating cognitive function are warranted.
Assessment of physical premises of selected pharmacies of Nepal
Authors: Poudel Bhupendra Kumar , Ishii Itsuko 
Published: June 2016

Background: This work attempts to investigate the standards of physical premises of pharmacies in terms of cleanliness, ventilation, protection from physical environment, spaciousness and storage facilities of two selected districts of Nepal: Kathmandu and Kaski. Methods: A cross-sectional, observational study of 100 randomly selected retail and wholesale pharmacies (55 from Kathmandu and 45 from Kaski) was conducted for their compliance to provisions of physical premises: cleanliness, ventilation, protection from physical environment, spaciousness and storage facilities. Preliminarily, scoring was done by converting 5-point Likert scale to a 100-point scale as follows: 1 = 0–20, 2 = 21–40, 3 = 41–60, 4 = 61–80 and 5 = 81–100. These scores were then reported as poor (score ⩽ 40), below average (score of 41–49), average (score of 50), above average (score of 51–60) and good (score ⩾ 61). Cronbach’s alpha for retails and wholesales obtained was .720 and .757, respectively. Results: In wholesales, protection from physical environment was least scored among other components, with the mean score 34.7 ± 8.3 for Kathmandu and 37.3 ± 13.3 for Kaski. Ventilation was scored 35.3 ± 6.3 for Kathmandu and 39.3 ± 11.6 for Kaski. All other components were obtained below average. However, in retails, the storage facilities were rated ‘poor’ with mean score 36.3 ± 13.9 for Kathmandu and 36.0 ± 11.9 for Kaski. Most other components were scored above average except for ventilation which was scored ‘good’. It was found that there was no significant difference between physical premises of the pharmacies of Kathmandu and Kaski in terms of all the indicators. The findings suggest that physical premise of many pharmacies was not found appropriate as provisioned in the good pharmacy practice requirements of Codes on Sales and Distribution of Drugs. Conclusion: Most pharmacies were found non-compliant to the aforementioned pharmacy premise components. Therefore, key partners should come up with commitment for increasing compliance to the legislative provisions of physical premises for ensuring quality and safety of medicines.
Do Total Knee Arthroplasty Patients Have a Higher Activity Level Compared to Patients With Osteoarthritis?
Authors: Kahn Timothy L. , Schwarzkopf Ran 
Published: June 2016

Background: Despite the alleviation of osteoarthritis (OA) symptoms that total knee arthroplasty (TKA) provides for patients with end-stage knee OA, recent studies have suggested that TKA may not increase physical activity levels. In this study, we compare the physical activity levels of patients with OA treated nonoperatively (non-TKA) with both patients who had received TKA (post-TKA) and patients who received TKA within 3 years of data collection (pre-TKA). Methods: Utilizing the Osteoarthritis Initiative database, accelerometry data were collected from non-TKA, pre-TKA, and post-TKA patients. Accelerometry data were subdivided by physical activity intensity levels, yielding daily minutes of each level of activity. Physical activity levels were then compared between non-TKA and pre-TKA/post-TKA patients. Physical activity levels for each patient were also compared to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) guidelines for physical activity. Results: There was no difference in physical activity between non-TKA and pre-TKA patients, with the exception of non-TKA patients achieving more daily minutes of vigorous activity ( P < .001). There was no difference in physical activity between non-TKA and post-TKA patients. Although 11.6% of non-TKA patients met DHHS guidelines, only 4.8% of pre-TKA and 5.3% of post-TKA patients met guidelines. Conclusion: Despite the improvements in patient-reported outcome measures following TKA, we found that TKA alone does not improve physical activity levels beyond those seen in the average patient with OA. In our study, the vast majority of patients with OA, treated nonoperatively or operatively, did not meet current DHHS guidelines for physical activity.
An integrative imputation method based on multi-omics datasets
Authors: Lin Dongdong , Zhang Jigang , Li Jingyao , Xu Chao , Deng Hong-Wen , Wang Yu-Ping 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
Background
Integrative analysis of multi-omics data is becoming increasingly important to unravel functional mechanisms of complex diseases. However, the currently available multi-omics datasets inevitably suffer from missing values due to technical limitations and various constrains in experiments. These missing values severely hinder integrative analysis of multi-omics data. Current imputation methods mainly focus on using single omics data while ignoring biological interconnections and information imbedded in multi-omics data sets.

Results
In this study, a novel multi-omics imputation method was proposed to integrate multiple correlated omics datasets for improving the imputation accuracy. Our method was designed to: 1) combine the estimates of missing value from individual omics data itself as well as from other omics, and 2) simultaneously impute multiple missing omics datasets by an iterative algorithm. We compared our method with five imputation methods using single omics data at different noise levels, sample sizes and data missing rates. The results demonstrated the advantage and efficiency of our method, consistently in terms of the imputation error and the recovery of mRNA-miRNA network structure.

Conclusions
We concluded that our proposed imputation method can utilize more biological information to minimize the imputation error and thus can improve the performance of downstream analysis such as genetic regulatory network construction.
Experience of the European Economic and Monetary Union and Its Implications for the Eurasian Integration Project
Authors: Родичева  , Rodicheva Yulia 
Published: June 2016

The article is devoted to the prospects of the monetary union creation on the
basis of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), analyzed with consideration of the
lessons learned from the experience of the Economic and Monetary Union of the
European Union (EMU). The author comes to the unambiguous conclusion:
a monetary union should be firmly based on successively passed preceding levels
of integration. Real convergence of national economies alongside with creation
of common financial market is crucial for completion of the Eurasian integration
in form of an economic union. Development towards the monetary union would
require implicit adherence to the “four freedoms” principle as well as scrupulous
coordination of fiscal policies. Nowadays, introduction of a single currency can’t
be seen as top priority of the monetary and financial integration within the
framework of the EAEU: the emphasis is put on coordination of exchange rate
policies and broader use of national currencies in mutual settlements.
Accelerated Weathering of Recycled Polypropylene Packaging Bag Composites Reinforced with Wheat Straw Fibers
Authors: Yu Min , He Chunxia , Huang Runzhou , Liu Junjun , Lu Derong 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
In this study, there were two kinds of recycled polypropylene (RPP) packaging bags, RPP disposable packaging bags (RPP-DB) and RPP woven bags (RPP-WB), used as matrix reinforced with wheat straw fiber (WSF). The aim of this study was to investigate the relative degradation behavior of WSF/RPP composites with two RPP matrices under weathering conditions. The RPP packaging bags were blended with WSF by a two-roll mill mixer and then molded by a compression molding machine. The effects of accelerated weathering on the surface morphology, surface color, surface chemistry, thermal properties, and mechanical properties were evaluated after distinct periods; the total time of exposure of the composites in a QUV-accelerated weathering tester was 1,200 hours. The weathering degradation process of WS/RPP-DB was gradual from surface to interior, whereas the internal collapse aggravated the performance reduction of WS/RPP-WB. The weathering resulted in significant discoloration. The photobleaching of WS/RPP-DB was faster than of WS/RPP-WB. The Fourier-transform infrared spectrum suggested that the color change was closely related to the formation of carbonyl groups and degradation of lignin. After weathering, the thermal properties of WS/RPP-DB and WS/RPP-WB were both decreased. The flexural strength and modulus of WS/RPP strongly decreased with exposure time and was related to the surface crack of composites. The utilization of RPP packaging bags as matrix could be a good candidate of wood–plastic composites for applications in the future.