bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Decisionmaking in Regional Health Planning Agencies
Authors: Luft Harold S. , Frisvold Gary A. 
Published: September 2015

Health Systems Agencies (HSAs), the new regional health planning agencies established by the National Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974, have as their major goals quality, accessibility, continuity and cost containment. One of the tools for cost containment available to HSAs is their active participation in the statewide certificate-of-need (CON) program. To help anticipate how HSAs may play their CON roles, this article reviews the CON decisionmaking processes of two Comprehensive Health Planning (CHP) agencies, the predecessors of HSAs. While most CHPs lacked specific health plans and powers, the two California agencies examined have had both regional plans and roles in CON programs comparable to the present HSAs'.
Our focus is on the decisionmaking process rather than the effectiveness of CON programs. A simple descriptive model is developed based on the assumptions that the planners seek satisfactory, rather than optimal solutions and that the data available to them are extremely limited. The cases analyzed suggest that, while most projects exceed the bed need standards, institutions were almost always able to demonstrate a need through various special circumstances. Once a need has been shown, the agency was able to deny an application only if a better alternative were available.
This study suggests two approaches to improving regional health planning decisionmaking. First, identified needs can be better met either by increasing the agency's ability to generate alternatives or by encouraging health facilities to submit competing applications. Second, a regional health care budget would force the agency to make choices among competing needs.
A Full-Price Approach to the Dental Market: Implications for Price Determination
Authors: House Donald R. 
Published: September 2015

Policy initiated in the 1970s follows the contention that competitive forces do not work and new types of regulation are warranted. This article presents an expanded demand-supply theory introducing patient waiting time as a component of full price. Equilibrium is reached through adjustments in both fee levels and waiting time. Competitive markets require unequal fee levels among providers in the same community and differing provider-to-population ratios across communities.
The evidence from dentistry presented supports this expanded theory. Fees and waiting time are inversely related and full price is apparently insensitive to dentist density. Communities seeking higher fees and shorter waits attract more dentists per capita. Two additional studies cited further support this expanded approach. Patient waiting time is an important component of price.
State Dental Practice Acts: Implications for Competition
Authors: Conrad Douglas A. , Emerson Marie L. 
Published: September 2015

This article analyzes the effects of state dental practice acts on competition in the market for dental services. Three types of practice act provisions are examined: (1) restraints on advertising and soliciting of patients; (2) limits on scope of practice and number of dental hygienists per dentist; and (3) restrictions on the form of organization and ownership of dental practices.
The empirical results suggest that limits on number of offices per dentist and absence of reciprocal licensing arrangements are associated with higher fees and net incomes among dentists. Restraints on number of hygienists per dentist are positively associated with dental fees, but not with net income. Restrictions on commercial advertising are related to higher net income, but not fees. There is no significant intercorrelation among the various practice act provisions.
The analysis concludes with a discussion of policy implications for competition in dentistry and a suggestion that practice act changes are both a cause and an effect of the general metamorphosis observed in the dental marketplace. The potential indirect effects of national health insurance and altered reimbursement policy are discussed.
Effect of Glass Transition Temperature of Stabilizing Polymer of Air-Stable Gelatin-Stabilized Copper Fine Particles during Redox Two-Step Low-Temperature Sintering Process
Authors: Matsubara Masaki , Yonezawa Tetsu , Tsukamoto Hiroki 
Published: September 2015

Abstract
It has been found in this study that the glass transition temperatures can be considered as the lowest temperature for sintering metal fine particles to obtain electro-conductive metallic layers from the differential scanning calorimetry measurement of the fine particles. Gelatin-stabilized copper fine particles could be sintered to form an electrically conductive copper layer with a resistivity of 1.9 × 10−5 Ω cm at as low as 150 °C using oxidation–reduction two-step sintering.
Audits and agrarianism: The moral economy of an alternative food network
Authors: Carlisle Liz 
Published: September 2015

Abstract
With consumers and producers seeking alternatives to corporate, industrial food, systems of provision that promise greater ecological and social sustainability have gained in popularity. As these Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) scale up and go mainstream, both scholars and the general public want to know who is holding them accountable to their purported goals. In response to such questions, previously informal designations - such as organic - have become formalized, standardized, and institutionalized, and new certifications and business models promise improved traceability and transparency. I suggest, however, that successful alternative food networks - those that deliver on their promises of social and ecological sustainability – may be governed primarily by broad-based moral economies and support networks, and only secondarily by specific certification schemes or value chain quality control. Drawing on ethnographic research with a values-based supply chain on the northern Great Plains, I find that what creates incentives for sustainable practices and holds farmers accountable is less the regulatory component of certification or contractual stipulations of the value chain than the peer review aspect of belonging to the self-organized community that participates in these initiatives. While the organic certification process and values-based supply chain provide vehicles through which the moral economy of sustainable agriculture can operate, the moral economy itself precedes the notion of organic standards, dating back three generations to early twentieth century wheat pools. Since community formation and standard formation are achieved in very different ways, these findings have significant implications for policies aimed at encouraging transitions to more sustainable agricultural practices.
Application of Fluorescence Based Molecular Assays for Improved Detection and Typing of Brucella Strains in Clinical Samples
Authors: Krstevski Kiril , Naletoski Ivancho , Mitrov Dine , Mrenoshki Slavcho , Cvetkovikj Iskra , Janevski Aleksandar , Dodovski Aleksandar , Djadjovski Igor 
Published: September 2015

Abstract
Bacteria from the genus Brucella are causative agents of brucellosis - a zoonotic disease which affects many wild and domestic animal species and humans. Taking into account the significant socio-economic and public health impact of brucellosis, its control is of great importance for endemic areas. The chosen control strategy could be successful only if adapted to the current epidemiological situation. This implies that a choice of appropriate diagnostic procedures for detection and typing of Brucella spp. strains are of essential importance. Significant advancement of molecular techniques and their advantages compared to classical methods, give strong arguments in promotion of these techniques as a powerful tool for comprehensive diagnostics of brucellosis. Considering this, the major tasks of the study were to select and implement molecular tests for detection and genotyping Brucella spp. and evaluate their performances using DNA from cultivated brucellae (islolates) and limited number of tissue samples from seropositive animals. The obtained results confirmed that implemented real time PCR for Brucella spp. detection, as well as MLVA-16 used for genotyping, have excellent analytical sensitivity (4.2 fg of Brucella DNA were successfully detected and genotyped). Furthermore, compared to bacteriological cultivation of Brucella spp., real time PCR and MLVA-16 protocols showed superior diagnostic sensitivity and detected Brucella DNA in tissues from which Brucella could not be cultivated. Based on the summarized study results, we propose a diagnostic algorithm for detection and genotyping of Brucella spp. bacteria. Routine use of proposed diagnostic algorithm will improve the effectiveness of infection confirmation and help for accurate evaluation of epidemiological situation.
Towards scalable real-time analytics
Authors: Goel Anil K. , Pound Jeffrey , Auch Nathan , Bumbulis Peter , MacLean Scott , Färber Franz , Gropengiesser Francis , Mathis Christian , Bodner Thomas , Lehner Wolfgang 
Published: September 2015

We present an overview of our work on the SAP HANA Scale-out Extension, a novel distributed database architecture designed to support large scale analytics over real-time data. This platform permits high performance OLAP with massive scale-out capabilities, while concurrently allowing OLTP workloads. This dual capability enables analytics over real-time changing data and allows fine grained user-specified service level agreements (SLAs) on data freshness. We advocate the decoupling of core database components such as query processing, concurrency control, and persistence, a design choice made possible by advances in high-throughput low-latency networks and storage devices. We provide full ACID guarantees and build on a logical timestamp mechanism to provide MVCC-based snapshot isolation, while not requiring synchronous updates of replicas. Instead, we use asynchronous update propagation guaranteeing consistency with timestamp validation.
We provide a view into the design and development of a large scale data management platform for real-time analytics, driven by the needs of modern enterprise customers.
Evaluating SPARQL queries on massive RDF datasets
Authors: Harbi Razen , Abdelaziz Ibrahim , Kalnis Panos , Mamoulis Nikos 
Published: September 2015

Distributed RDF systems partition data across multiple computer nodes. Partitioning is typically based on heuristics that minimize inter-node communication and it is performed in an initial, data pre-processing phase. Therefore, the resulting partitions are static and do not adapt to changes in the query workload; as a result, existing systems are unable to consistently avoid communication for queries that are not favored by the initial data partitioning. Furthermore, for very large RDF knowledge bases, the partitioning phase becomes prohibitively expensive, leading to high startup costs.
In this paper, we propose AdHash, a distributed RDF system which addresses the shortcomings of previous work. First, AdHash initially applies lightweight hash partitioning, which drastically minimizes the startup cost, while favoring the parallel processing of join patterns on subjects, without any data communication. Using a locality-aware planner, queries that cannot be processed in parallel are evaluated with minimal communication. Second, AdHash monitors the data access patterns and adapts dynamically to the query load by incrementally redistributing and replicating frequently accessed data. As a result, the communication cost for future queries is drastically reduced or even eliminated. Our experiments with synthetic and real data verify that AdHash (i) starts faster than all existing systems, (ii) processes thousands of queries before other systems become online, and (iii) gracefully adapts to the query load, being able to evaluate queries on billion-scale RDF data in sub-seconds. In this demonstration, audience can use a graphical interface of AdHash to verify its performance superiority compared to state-of-the-art distributed RDF systems.
Error diagnosis and data profiling with data x-ray
Authors: Wang Xiaolan , Feng Mary , Wang Yue , Dong Xin Luna , Meliou Alexandra 
Published: September 2015

The problem of identifying and repairing data errors has been an area of persistent focus in data management research. However, while traditional data cleaning techniques can be effective at identifying several data discrepancies, they disregard the fact that many errors aresystematic, inherent to the process that produces the data, and thus will keep occurring unless the root cause is identified and corrected.In this demonstration, we will present a large-scale diagnostic framework called DataXRay. Like a medical X-ray that aids the diagnosis of medical conditions by revealing problems underneath the surface, DataXRayreveals hidden connections and common properties among data errors. Thus, in contrast to traditional cleaning methods, which treat the symptoms, our system investigates the underlying conditions that cause the errors.The core of DataXRaycombines an intuitive and principled cost model derived by Bayesian analysis, and an efficient, highly-parallelizable diagnostic algorithm that discovers common properties among erroneous data elements in a top-down fashion. Our system has a simple interface that allows users to load different datasets, to interactively adjust key diagnostic parameters, to explore the derived diagnoses, and to compare with solutions produced by alternative algorithms. Through this demonstration, participants will understand (1) the characteristics of good diagnoses, (2) how and why errors occur in real-world datasets, and (3) the distinctions with other related problems and approaches.
WADaR
Authors: Ortona Stefano , Orsi Giorgio , Buoncristiano Marcello , Furche Tim 
Published: September 2015

Web scraping (or wrapping) is a popular means for acquiring data from the web. Recent advancements have made scalable wrapper-generation possible and enabled data acquisition processes involving thousands of sources. This makes wrapper analysis and maintenance both needed and challenging as no scalable tools exists that support these tasks.
We demonstrate WADaR, a scalable and highly automated tool for joint wrapper and data repair. WADaR uses off-the-shelf entity recognisers to locate target entities in wrapper-generated data. Markov chains are used to determine structural repairs, that are then encoded into suitable repairs for both the data and corresponding wrappers.
We show that WADaR is able to increase the quality of wrapper-generated relations between 15% and 60%, and to fully repair the corresponding wrapper without any knowledge of the original website in more than 50% of the cases.
Databases and hardware
Authors: Ailamaki Anastasia 
Published: September 2015

Fast query and transaction processing is the goal of 40 years of database research and the reason of existence for many new database system architectures. In data management, system performance means acceptable response time and throughput on critical-path operations, ideally with scalability guarantees. Performance is improved with top-of-the line research on data processing algorithms; efficiency, however, is contingent on seamless collaboration between the database software and hardware and storage devices. In 1980, the goal was to minimize disk accesses; in 2000, memory replaced disks in terms of access costs. Nowadays performance is synonymous to scalability; scalability, in turn, translates into sustainable and predictable use of hardware resources in the face of embarrassing parallelism and deep storage hierarchies while minimizing energy needs - a challenging goal in multiple dimensions.
We discuss work done in the past four decades to tighten the interaction between the database software and underlying hardware and show that, as application and microarchitecture roadmaps evolve, the effort of maintaining smooth collaboration blossoms into a multitude of interesting research avenues with direct technological impact.
Metadiscourse Use in English Job Applications
Authors: Lin Meizhen 
Published: September 2015

AbstractUnder the theoretical framework of Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse, an in-depth analysis of the distribution and characteristics of metadiscourse in English job applications is carried out. The findings show that metadiscourse is frequently used in English job applications and these resources have different occurrence frequencies. The writers use more interactional metadiscourse than interactive metadiscourse. Among all the metadiscourse subcategories, self-mentions, transitions and hedges are frequently used. The analysis demonstrates that all metadiscourse resources seem to stress the interpersonal potential in order to convey a persuasive message under an informative mask. It is also shown that metadiscourse use is genre-constrained and the writer’s writing purpose.
Subjective outcome evaluation of a university subject on service leadership
Authors: Shek Daniel T.L. , Liang Jianqiang 
Published: September 2015

AbstractUniversity students (n=58) responded to a 45-item subjective outcome evaluation scale after taking a credit-bearing elective subject titled “Service Leadership” at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in the first semester of the 2013–14 academic year. Results showed that the students generally displayed positive perceptions of the program content and the instructors, and most of them perceived the subject to be beneficial to different aspects of their development. As predicted, three subscales of the scale (Program Content, Program Implementer, and Program Benefits) were significantly correlated. Similar to the previous studies, perceived quality of the program but not quality of instructors and program benefits predicted the students’ overall satisfaction with the program.
Analysis of Performance for 100 Gbit/s Dual-Polarization QPSK Modulation Format System
Authors: Li Li , Xiao-bo Guo , Jing Li 
Published: September 2015

AbstractThis article introduces modulation technology, coherent reception technology, the overall design and other key issues for 100 Gbit/s dual-polarization quadrature phase shift keying (DP-QPSK) modulation. Using the technologies based on digital signal processing (DSP), it realizes the long-range transmissions of 100 Gbit/s optical systems to achieve optical signal dispersion compensation, polarized solution reuse and phase estimation. The effect of this scheme is verified with OptiSystem, and the simulation results indicate, with the help of DSP module for processing of the received signal, that the last constellation is ideal and the data transmission error rate is less than 1.3 e
3D/4D sonography – any safety problem
Authors: Pooh Ritsuko K. , Maeda Kazuo , Kurjak Asim , Sen Cihat , Ebrashy Alaa , Adra Abdallah , Dayyabu Aliyu Labaran , Wataganara Tuangsit , de Sá Renato Augusto Moreira , Stanojevic Milan 
Published: September 2015

AbstractGray-scale image data are processed in 3D ultrasound by repeated scans of multiple planes within a few seconds to achieve one surface rendering image and three perpendicular plane images. The 4D image is achieved by repeating 3D images in short intervals, i.e. 3D and 4D ultrasound are based on simple B-mode images. During 3D/4D acquisition, a fetus
»Indian Country«. Der Raum als Feind in der Gewaltgeschichte der europäischen Expansion
Authors: Walter Dierk 
Published: September 2015

Abstract
More than many other armed conflicts of the modern era, the colonial wars/wars of empire fought by Western powers at the periphery of the world system over the past five centuries were defined by spatial categories. The problems of transoceanic or transcontinental power projection and the economic logic of the imperial system limited the military means employed on the periphery, making them often insufficient for the effective control of extended, inaccessible, and inhospitable spaces. Faced with an adversary capable of using these wide spaces to avoid decisive battle, the imperial military resorted to warfare against entire societies. Cognitively and mentally, Western armed forces experienced the periphery as an alien space, a space in which physical geography and human enemy seemed to be organically connected in opposing the invader. This perception of the peripheral space was not only partially responsible for atrocities, but could also result in warfare against nature itself.
Bending properties of carbon fiber nanocomposites with lamination structure of reinforcement
Authors: Song Jun Hee 
Published: September 2015

AbstractAdvanced materials with excellent performance are in high demand in modern industry. Carbon fiber composites offer a number of advantageous mechanical properties. A significant improvement in fiber-reinforced composites can be achieved by dispersing a very small amount of nanofiller in the resin. Vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) is one of the most important processes for producing reinforced plastics. In this work, several composite samples were fabricated with the infusion of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) into the epoxy matrix using VARTM process. Using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), it was confirmed that CNFs were well dispersed in the resin. Bending tests were performed to investigate the mechanical properties of the samples, and SEM, to examine the fracture surfaces.