bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Risk Prediction for Adverse Events during Initiation of Sotalol and Dofetilide for the Treatment of Atrial Fibrillation
Authors: AGUSALA KARTIK , OESTERLE ADAM , KULKARNI CHIRAAG , CAPRIO TIMOTHY , SUBACIUS HARIS , PASSMAN ROD 
Published: January 2015

BackgroundInpatient antiarrhythmic drug initiation for atrial fibrillation is mandated for dofetilide (DF) and is often performed for sotalol (SL), particularly if proarrhythmia risk factors are present. Whether low‐risk patients can be identified to safely allow outpatient initiation is unknown.MethodsA single‐center retrospective cohort study was performed on patients initiated with DF or SL. Risk factors for adverse events (AEs), defined as any arrhythmia or electrocardiogram change requiring dose reduction or cessation, were identified.ResultsOf 329 patients, 227 (69%) received SL and 102 (31%) DF. The cohort had a mean age of 63 ± 13 years; 70% of patients were male and had a baseline QTc of 440 ± 37 ms. A total of 105 AEs occurred in 92 patients: QTc prolongation or ventricular tachyarrhythmia in 70 patients (67% of AEs), bradyarrhythmias in 35 patients (33% of AEs), with some experiencing both AE types. Ventricular arrhythmias were seen in 23 patients (7%) and torsades de pointes in one (0.3%). Total AE rates were similar between drugs (P = 0.09); however, DF patients had more QTc prolongation or ventricular arrhythmias (P = 0.001). In SL patients, there were no predictors for QTc prolongation or ventricular proarrhythmia. In DF patients, higher baseline QTc interval (odds ratio = 1.64/25 ms, P = 0.01) was an independent predictor of QTc prolongation or ventricular proarrhythmias. For patients without proarrhythmia risk factors, overall AE rate was 26%.ConclusionsIn conclusion, AEs are common during DF and SL initiation but rarely severe in hospitalized inpatients. Baseline QTc predicts AEs for DF patients only and AE are common even in “low‐risk” patients. These results support in‐hospital drug initiation for all DF and SL patients.
Thromboembolic Events 7–11 Years after Catheter Ablation of Atrial Fibrillation
Authors: TRAN VAN NAM , TESSITORE ELENA , GENTIL‐BARON PASCALE , JANNOT ANNE‐SOPHIE , SUNTHORN HENRI , BURRI HARAN , MACH FRANÇOIS , SHAH DIPEN 
Published: January 2015

BackgroundThe results of catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation (AF) beyond 6 years remain unknown. The goal of this study is to assess the risk of thromboembolic events (TEs) and outcomes of AF ablation at long‐term follow‐up (FU).MethodsAll patients who had AF ablation from 2002 until 2005 in our center were contacted for a FU including a questionnaire, cardiac rhythm monitoring, and transthoracic echocardiography.ResultsAmong the 264 eligible patients, 164 (62%) completed the study. The mean FU was 9.1 years (7.7–10.5). Seven patients had a TE during FU (event ratio 0.41 per 100 patient years [PY]) and their mean CHA2DS2‐VASc score was 3.1 ± 1.3. Two patients died from stroke (0.14 per 100 PY) and five of the seven were considered in sinus rhythm (SR) and were off anticoagulation at the time of event. Prior to ablation, 13 patients had history of TE, and only one had a TE during FU. Overall, 14 deaths were documented (0.58 per 100 PY). Stable SR was present in 111 patients (68% of 164 patients) after 1.5 ± 0.6 procedures/patient. Univariate analysis showed that dyslipidemia (odds ratio [OR] = 2.95, P = 0.003), CHA2DS2‐VASc ≥2 (OR = 3.22, P = 0.001), and amiodarone (OR = 5.64, P < 0.001) were predictors of long‐term recurrence. Multivariate analysis showed that only CHA2DS2‐VASc ≥2 (OR = 2.67, P = 0.023) and amiodarone (OR = 4.62, P = 0.001) were predictors.ConclusionsOur study shows low TE rates 9 years after ablation of AF that are lower than published data for AF patients with anticoagulation only. AF patients with a CHA2DS2‐VASc ≥2 should, however, be maintained on anticoagulation.
Decontamination Efficiency of a DBD Lamp Containing an UV–C Emitting Phosphor
Authors: Caillier Bruno , Caiut José Maurício Almeida , Muja Cristina , Demoucron Julien , Mauricot Robert , Dexpert‐Ghys Jeanette , Guillot Philippe 
Published: January 2015

AbstractAmong different physical and chemical agents, the UV radiation appears to be an important route for inactivation of resistant microorganisms. The present study introduces a new mercury‐free Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) flat lamp, where the biocide action comes from the UV emission produced by rare‐earth phosphor obtained by spray pyrolysis, following plasma excitation. In this study, the emission intensity of the prototype lamp is tuned by controlling gas pressure and electrical power, 500 mbar and 15 W, corresponding to optimal conditions. In order to characterize the prototype lamp, the energetic output, temperature increase following lamp ignition and ozone production of the source were measured. The bactericidal experiments carried out showed excellent results for several gram‐positive and gram‐negative bacterial strains, thus demonstrating the high decontamination efficiency of the DBD flat lamp. Finally, the study of the external morphology of the microorganisms after the exposure to the UV emission suggested that other mechanisms than the bacterial DNA damage could be involved in the inactivation process.
Gender and Risk Taking: Evidence From Jumping Competitions
Authors: Böheim René , Lackner Mario 
Published: January 2015

SummaryWe analyse whether female athletes differ from male athletes in their risk-taking behaviour in a competitive setting. Data from high jump and pole vault competitions allow us to identify risky strategies. We estimate whether female athletes use risky strategies as often as male athletes and whether or not their returns to risky strategies differ. Returns to risky strategies are identified via an instrumental variable approach where we use competitive pressure to instrument individual risk taking. Female athletes take fewer risky decisions than men and could improve their outcomes by incurring more risk. We show that competitive pressure results in more risky decisions by both men and women; however, men react stronger to competitive pressure.
Phosphorus control as an effective strategy to adapt soybean to drought at the reproductive stage: evidence from field experiments across northeast China
Authors: Zheng H.F. , Chen L.D. , Yu X.Y. , Zhao X.F. , Ma Y. , Ren Z.B. 
Published: January 2015

AbstractDrought stress during the reproductive stage is one of the most important constraints on growth and productivity of soybean. There is compelling evidence that physiological and molecular approaches can effectively improve drought resistance in soybean, but strategies derived from soil management are poorly documented, especially under field conditions. In this study, we combined data from field experiments and used multivariate regression analyses to investigate factors determining soybean yield variability over two growing seasons with drought stress during the reproductive stage. Phosphorus application and soil available phosphorus explained a significant proportion of the variation in soybean yield under drought stress. As a whole, soybean fields that received adequate P supply had greater yields than those that did not. However, excessive P application significantly decreased soybean yield. These results suggest that P control is critical to mitigate soybean yield losses resulting from drought at the reproductive stage.
Robust biological nitrogen fixation in a model grass–bacterial association
Authors: Pankievicz Vânia C. S. , do Amaral Fernanda P. , Santos Karina F. D. N. , Agtuca Beverly , Xu Youwen , Schueller Michael J. , Arisi Ana Carolina M. , Steffens Maria. B.R. , de Souza Emanuel M. , Pedrosa Fábio O. , Stacey Gary , Ferrieri Richard A. 
Published: January 2015

SummaryNitrogen‐fixing rhizobacteria can promote plant growth; however, it is controversial whether biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) from associative interaction contributes to growth promotion. The roots of Setaria viridis, a model C4 grass, were effectively colonized by bacterial inoculants resulting in a significant enhancement of growth. Nitrogen‐13 tracer studies provided direct evidence for tracer uptake by the host plant and incorporation into protein. Indeed, plants showed robust growth under nitrogen‐limiting conditions when inoculated with an ammonium‐excreting strain of Azospirillum brasilense. 11C‐labeling experiments showed that patterns in central carbon metabolism and resource allocation exhibited by nitrogen‐starved plants were largely reversed by bacterial inoculation, such that they resembled plants grown under nitrogen‐sufficient conditions. Adoption of S. viridis as a model should promote research into the mechanisms of associative nitrogen fixation with the ultimate goal of greater adoption of BNF for sustainable crop production.
Globalisation and Obesity
Authors: Miljkovic Dragan , Shaik Saleem , Miranda Silvia , Barabanov Nikita , Liogier Anais 
Published: January 2015

AbstractThe WHO has recently announced the global obesity epidemic. An economic model is developed in which globalisation factors generate health externalities and contribute to global obesity growth. The unbalanced panel data set contains the information for 79 countries over the period 1986–2008. Fixed‐effects panel data estimation and quantile regression analysis were used to analyse the data. The fixed‐effects panel model results indicate that the impact of trade openness and the globalisation social index (GSI) on global obesity rates is positive and significant, which is consistent with prior expectations, while surprisingly the foreign direct investments (FDI) has no impact on global obesity. While these results are interesting, they are hiding the effect of globalisation processes across the conditional distribution of the obesity variable. The use of quantile regression uncovered that the impact of the FDI and the GSI on low and average quantiles (low and average obesity rates in our sample) is positive and significant, while high quantiles are not affected. Since low and average quantiles (low and average obesity rates) are representative of the less‐ and medium‐developed countries, this result implies that social globalisation and FDI adversely impact obesity in less‐to‐medium developed countries. Trade openness generally has no impact on changes in obesity rates across quantiles.
Inflammasome Activation Contributes to Interleukin-23 Production in Response to Clostridium difficile
Authors: Cowardin Carrie A. , Kuehne Sarah A. , Buonomo Erica L. , Marie Chelsea S. , Minton Nigel P. , Petri William A. 
Published: January 2015

ABSTRACT  Clostridium difficileis the most common hospital-acquired pathogen, causing antibiotic-associated diarrhea in over 250,000 patients annually in the United States. Disease is primarily mediated by toxins A and B, which induce potent proinflammatory signaling in host cells and can activate an ASC-containing inflammasome. Recent findings suggest that the intensity of the host response to infection correlates with disease severity. Our lab has identified the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-23 (IL-23) as a pathogenic mediator during C. difficile infection (CDI). The mechanisms by which C. difficile induces IL-23, however, are not well understood, and the role of toxins A and B in this process is unclear. Here, we show that toxins A and B alone are not sufficient for IL-23 production but synergistically increase the amount of IL-23 produced in response to MyD88-dependent danger signals, including pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and host-derived damage associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). Danger signals also enhanced the secretion of IL-1β in response to toxins A and B, and subsequent IL-1 receptor signaling accounted for the majority of the increase in IL-23 that occurred in the presence of the toxins. Inhibition of inflammasome activation in the presence of extracellular K+likewise decreased IL-23 production. Finally, we found that IL-1β was increased in the serum of patients with CDI, suggesting that this systemic response could influence downstream production of pathogenic IL-23. Identification of the synergy of danger signals with toxins A and B via inflammasome signaling represents a novel finding in the mechanistic understanding of C. difficile-induced inflammation.IMPORTANCEClostridium difficileis among the leading causes of death due to health care-associated infection, and factors determining disease severity are not well understood. C. difficile secretes toxins A and B, which cause inflammation and tissue damage, and recent findings suggest that some of this tissue damage may be due to an inappropriate host immune response. We have found that toxins A and B, in combination with both bacterium- and host-derived danger signals, can induce expression of the proinflammatory cytokines IL-1β and IL-23. Our results demonstrate that IL-1β signaling enhances IL-23 production and could lead to increased pathogenic inflammation during CDI.
Is schizophrenia associated with an increased risk of chronic kidney disease? A nationwide matched-cohort study
Authors: Tzeng Nian-Sheng , Hsu Yung-Ho , Ho Shinn-Ying , Kuo Yu-Ching , Lee Hua-Chin , Yin Yun-Ju , Chen Hong-An , Chen Wen-Liang , Chu William Cheng-Chung , Huang Hui-Ling 
Published: January 2015

ObjectiveThe impact of schizophrenia on vital diseases, such as chronic kidney disease (CKD), has not as yet been verified. This study aims to establish whether there is an association between schizophrenia and CKD.DesignA nationwide matched cohort study.SettingTaiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database.ParticipantsA total of 2338 patients with schizophrenia, and 7014 controls without schizophrenia (1:3), matched cohort for sex, age group, geography, urbanisation and monthly income, between 1 January 2003 and 31 December 2007, based on the International Classifications of Disease Ninth Edition (ICD-9), Clinical Modification codes.Primary and secondary outcome measuresAfter making adjustments for confounding risk factors, a Cox proportional hazards model was used to compare the risk of developing CKD during a 3-year follow-up period from the index date.ResultsOf the 2338-subject case cohort, 163 (6.97%) developed a CKD, as did 365 (5.20%) of the 7014 control participants. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis revealed that patients with schizophrenia were more likely to develop CKD (HR=1.36, 95% CI 1.13 to 1.63; p<0.001). After adjusting for gender, age group, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidaemia, heart disease and non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) usage, the HR for patients with schizophrenia was 1.25 (95% CI 1.04 to 1.50; p<0.05). Neither typical nor atypical antipsychotics was associated an increased risk of CKD in patients with schizophrenia.ConclusionsThe findings from this population-based retrospective cohort study suggest that schizophrenia is associated with a 25% increase in the risk of developing CKD within only a 3-year follow-up period.
Hamiltonian analysis for Lifshitz type fields
Authors: Gaona Alejandro , Romero Juan M. 
Published: January 2015

Using the Dirac method, we study the Hamiltonian consistency for three field theories. First, we study the electrodynamics a la Hořava and we show that this system is consistent for an arbitrary dynamical exponent z. Second, we study a Lifshitz type electrodynamics, which was proposed by Alexandre and Mavromatos [Phys. Rev. D 84, 105013 (2011)]. For this latter system we found that the canonical momentum and the electrical field are related through a Proca type Green function, however this system is consistent. In addition, we show that the anisotropic Yang–Mills theory with dynamical exponent z = 2 is consistent. Finally, we study a generalized anisotropic Yang–Mills theory and we show that this system is consistent too.
Static Task Partitioning for Locked Caches in Multicore Real-Time Systems
Authors: Sarkar Abhik , Mueller Frank , Ramaprasad Harini 
Published: January 2015

Growing processing demand on multitasking real-time systems can be met by employing scalable multicore architectures. For such environments, locking cache lines for hard real-time systems ensures timing predictability of data references and may lower worst-case execution time. This work studies the benefits of cache locking on massive multicore architectures with private caches in the context of hard real-time systems. In shared cache architectures, the cache is a single resource shared among
all
of the tasks. However, in scalable cache architectures with private caches, conflicts exist only among the tasks scheduled on one core. This calls for a cache-aware allocation of tasks onto cores.

The objective of this work is to increase the predictability of memory accesses resolved by caches while reducing the number of cores for a given task set. This allows designers to reduce the footprint of their subsystem of real-time tasks and thereby cost, either by choosing a product with fewer cores as a target or to allow more subsystems to be co-located on a given fixed number of cores.
Our work proposes a novel variant of the cache-unaware First Fit Decreasing (FFD) algorithm called Naive locked First Fit Decreasing (NFFD) policy. We propose two cache-aware static scheduling schemes: (a) Greedy First Fit Decreasing (GFFD) and (b) Colored First Fit Decreasing (CoFFD) for task sets where tasks do not have intratask conflicts among locked regions (Scenario A). NFFD is capable of scheduling high utilization task sets that FFD cannot schedule. Experiments also show that CoFFD consistently outperforms GFFD, resulting in a lower number of cores and lower system utilization. CoFFD reduces the number of core requirements by 30% to 60% compared to NFFD.
For a more generic case where tasks have intratask conflicts, we split the task partitioning between two phases: task selection and task allocation (Scenario B). Instead of resolving conflicts at a global level, these algorithms resolve conflicts among regions while allocating a task onto a core and unlocking at region level instead of task level. We show that a combination of dynamic ordering (task selection) with Chaitin’s Coloring (task allocation) scheme reduces the number of cores required by up to 22% over a basic scheme (in a combination of monotone ordering and regional FFD). Regional unlocking allows this scheme to outperform CoFFD for medium utilization task sets from Scenario A. However, CoFFD performs better than any other scheme for high utilization task sets from Scenario A. Overall, this work is unique in considering the challenges of future multicore architectures for real-time systems and provides key insights into task partitioning and cache-locking mechanisms for architectures with private caches.
Conducting Repeatable Experiments and Fair Comparisons using 802.11n MIMO Networks
Authors: Abedi Ali , Heard Andrew , Brecht Tim 
Published: January 2015

A commonly used technique for evaluating and comparing the performance of systems using 802.11 (WiFi) networks is to conduct experiments. This approach is appealing and important because it inherently captures critical properties of wireless signal transmission that are difficult to analytically model and simulate. Unfortunately, obtaining consistent and statistically meaningful empirical results using 802.11 networks, even in well-controlled environments, can be quite challenging and time consuming because channel conditions can vary over time.
In this paper, we use 2.4 and 5 GHz 802.11n MIMO networks to study different methodologies that could be used to evaluate and compare the performance of different alternatives used in 802.11 systems (e.g., different systems, configurations or algorithms). We first illustrate that some of the more commonly used methods in existing research are flawed and explain why. We then describe a methodology called multiple interleaved trials that, to our knowledge, has not been used for, or studied on, 802.11 networks. We evaluate this methodology and find that it can be used to repeat experiments and to compare the performance of different alternatives. Finally, we discuss other possible applications of this approach for comparative performance evaluations.
The dataref versuchung
Authors: Dietrich Christian , Lohmann Daniel 
Published: January 2015

Compared to more traditional disciplines, such as the natural sciences, computer science is said to have a somewhat sloppy relationship with the external repeatability of published results. However, from our experience the problem starts even earlier: In many cases, authors are not even able to replicate their own results a year later, or to explain how exactly that number on page three of the paper was ncomputed. Because of constant time pressure and strict submission deadlines, the successful researcher has to favor timely results over experiment documentation and data traceability.
We consider internal repeatability to be one of the most important prerequisites for external replicability and the scientific process. We describe our approach to foster internal repeatability in our own research projects with the help of dedicated tools for the automation of traceable experimental setups and for data presentation in scientific papers. By employing these tools, measures for ensuring internal repeatability no longer waste valuable working time and pay off quickly: They save time by eliminating recurring, and therefore error-prone, manual work steps, and at the same time increase confidence in experimental results.
Towards Fast Invariant Preservation in Geo-replicated Systems
Authors: Balegas Valter , Duarte Sérgio , Ferreira Carla , Rodrigues Rodrigo , Preguiça Nuno , Najafzadeh Mahsa , Shapiro Marc 
Published: January 2015

Today's global services and applications are expected to be highly available, scale to an unprecedented number of clients, and offer reliable, low-latency operations. This can be achieved through geo-replication, particularly when data consistency is relaxed. There are, however, applications whose data must obey global invariants at all times. Strong consistency protocols easily address this issue, but require global coordination among replicas and inevitably degrade application throughput and latency.
While coordination is an inherent requirement for maintaining global application invariants, there are instances where coordination on a per operation basis can be avoided. In particular, it has been shown that either moving coordination outside the critical path for executing operations, or having one coordination round for multiple operations, are both effective ways to maintain global invariants and avoid most of the penalties of coordination. However, current georeplication protocols still have not taken advantage of these observations.
In this paper, we review the design space of current solutions for building geo-replicated applications and present our guiding vision towards a general technique for providing global application invariants under eventual consistency, as a much cheaper alternative to strong consistency.