bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A case study of the development of WebPA: An online peer‐moderated marking tool
Authors: Loddington Steve , Pond Keith , Wilkinson Nicola , Willmot Peter 
Published: January 2009

AbstractPeer moderation of group work in higher education is rapidly advancing through the use of technological developments and is increasingly being informed by pedagogical research. The highly successful WebPA online assessment system has gone through a number of development phases over its 15‐year history and has now evolved into a relatively mature and flexible tool for facilitating group work. This paper presents a case study of the approaches that have been used in the system's development from the technical perspective, and describes how the scope of the project has massively expanded and that the development has been continually backed by a sound and wide‐ranging pedagogy. The benefits of using the online system are shown to be underpinned throughout by examples of good practice in the supervision of academic group work. A critical evaluation of the tool and surrounding pedagogical practices highlight future areas for technical expansion.
Students' evaluation of the use of online summative assessment on an undergraduate financial accounting module
Authors: Marriott Pru 
Published: January 2009

AbstractAccording to the Quality Assurance Agency, ‘Assessment describes any processes that appraise an individual's knowledge, understanding, abilities or skills’, and is inextricably linked to a course or programme's intended learning outcomes. It also has a fundamental effect on students' learning where it serves a variety of purposes including evaluation, feedback and motivation. Assessment also provides a performance indicator for both students and staff. E‐assessment offers opportunities for creating innovative assessment practices that help engage students and increase their motivation for learning. The paper reports the findings of a qualitative study undertaken in the academic years 2006–07 and 2007–08 where a series of online summative assessments were introduced into a 1st‐year financial accounting course. Feedback from students obtained from an evaluative survey and focus group interviews indicates that assessment played a significant role in the teaching/learning process. That is, students perceived a beneficial impact on learning, motivation and engagement.
Diagnostic online assessment of basic IT skills in 1st‐year undergraduates in the Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford
Authors: Sieber Vivien 
Published: January 2009

AbstractAttitude, experience and competence (broadly covered by the European Computer Driving Licence syllabus) in information technology (IT) were assessed in 846 1st‐year Medical Sciences Division undergraduates (2003–06) at the start of their first term. Online assessments delivered during induction workshops were presented as an opportunity for self‐evaluation and to provide performance‐related recommendations for training. Results were consistent over 4 years. There was no difference in attitude between years or programme of study and the majority selected ‘competent to use a range of applications’. Nor were there any differences in competence between all students in any year; however, male Medical Science students performed significantly better than females (2006). Students with a recognised IT qualification also did significantly better than those without. There was a discrepancy between measured skill and individual self‐evaluation of competence; in particular, weaker students overestimated their competence. In all years, some students showed a fundamental lack of understanding of basic IT skills. Introducing online diagnostic testing raised the profile of the importance of IT skills to both academic staff and students.
Reconstructing 3D Shape, Albedo and Illumination from a Single Face Image
Authors: Wang S. F. , Lai S. H. 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThe morphable model has been employed to efficiently describe 3D face shape and the associated albedo with a reduced set of basis vectors. The spherical harmonics (SH) model provides a compact basis to well approximate the image appearance of a Lambertian object under different illumination conditions. Recently, the SH and morphable models have been integrated for 3D face shape reconstruction. However, the reconstructed 3D shape is either inconsistent with the SH bases or obtained just from landmarks only. In this work, we propose a geometrically consistent algorithm to reconstruct the 3D face shape and the associated albedo from a single face image iteratively by combining the morphable model and the SH model. The reconstructed 3D face geometry can uniquely determine the SH bases, therefore the optimal 3D face model can be obtained by minimizing the error between the input face image and a linear combination of the associated SH bases. In this way, we are able to preserve the consistency between the 3D geometry and the SH model, thus refining the 3D shape reconstruction recursively. Furthermore, we present a novel approach to recover the illumination condition from the estimated weighting vector for the SH bases in a constrained optimization formulation independent of the 3D geometry. Experimental results show the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed face reconstruction and illumination estimation algorithm under different face poses and multiple‐light‐source illumination conditions.
View and Time Interpolation in Image Space
Authors: Stich Timo , Linz Christian , Albuquerque Georgia , Magnor Marcus 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThe ability to interpolate between images taken at different time and viewpoints directly in image space opens up new possiblities. The goal of our work is to create plausible in‐between images in real time without the need for an intermediate 3D reconstruction. This enables us to also interpolate between images recorded with uncalibrated and unsynchronized cameras. In our approach we use a novel discontiniuity preserving image deformation model to robustly estimate dense correspondences based on local homographies. Once correspondences have been computed we are able to render plausible in‐between images in real time while properly handling occlusions. We discuss the relation of our approach to human motion perception and other image interpolation techniques.
A Biorthogonal Wavelet Approach based on Dual Subdivision
Authors: Zhang Hui , Qin Guiming , Qin Kaihuai , Sun Hanqiu 
Published: January 2009

AbstractIn this paper a biorthogonal wavelet approach based on Doo‐Sabin subdivision is presented. In the dual subdivision like Doo‐Sabin scheme, all the old control vertices disappear after one subdivision step, which is a big challenge to the biorthogonal wavelet construction. In our approach, the barycenters of the V‐faces corresponding to the old vertices are selected as the vertices associated with the scaling functions to construct the scaling space. The lifting scheme is used to guarantee the fitting quality of the wavelet transform, and a local orthogonalization is introduced with a discrete inner product operation to improve the computation efficiency. Sharp feature modeling based on extended Doo‐Sabin subdivision rules is also discussed in the framework of our wavelet construction. The presented wavelet construction is proven to be stable and effective by the experimental results.
Patch‐type Segmentation of Voxel Shapes using Simplified Surface Skeletons
Authors: Reniers Dennie , Telea Alexandru 
Published: January 2009

AbstractWe present a new method for decomposing a 3D voxel shape into disjoint segments using the shape's simplified surface‐skeleton. The surface skeleton of a shape consists of 2D manifolds inside its volume. Each skeleton point has a maximally inscribed ball that touches the boundary in at least two contact points. A key observation is that the boundaries of the simplified fore‐ and background skeletons map one‐to‐one to increasingly fuzzy, soft convex, respectively concave, edges of the shape. Using this property, we build a method for segmentation of 3D shapes which has several desirable properties. Our method segments both noisy shapes and shapes with soft edges which vanish over low‐curvature regions. Multiscale segmentations can be obtained by varying the simplification level of the skeleton. We present a voxel‐based implementation of our approach and illustrate it on several realistic examples.
Online Personalised Non‐photorealistic Rendering Technique for 3D Geometry from Incremental Sketching
Authors: Ku Daychyi , Qin Shengfeng , Wright David K. , Ma Cuixia 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis paper presents an online personalised non‐photorealistic rendering (NPR) technique for 3D models generated from interactively sketched input. This technique has been integrated into a sketch‐based modelling system. It lets users interact with computers by drawing naturally, without specifying the number, order, or direction of strokes. After sketches are interpreted as 3D objects, they can be rendered with personalised drawing styles so that the reconstructed 3D model can be presented in a sketchy style similar in appearance to what have been drawn for the 3D model. This technique captures the user's drawing style without using template or prior knowledge of the sketching style. The personalised rendering style can be applied to both visible and initially invisible geometry. The rendering strokes are intelligently selected from the input sketches and mapped to edges of the 3D object. In addition, non‐geometric information such as surface textures can be added to the recognised object in different sketching modes. This will integrate sketch‐based incremental 3D modelling and NPR into conceptual design.
A Prism‐Free Method for Silhouette Rendering in Inverse Displacement Mapping
Authors: Chen Ying‐Chieh , Chang Chun‐Fa 
Published: January 2009

AbstractSilhouette is a key feature that distinguishes displacement mapping from normal mapping. However the silhouette rendering in the GPU implementation of displacement mapping (which is often called inversed displacement mapping) is tricky. Previous approaches rely mostly on construction of additional extruding prism‐like geometry, which slows down the rendering significantly. In this paper, we proposed a method for solving the silhouette rendering problem in inverse displace mapping without using any extruding prism‐like geometry. At each step of intersection finding, we continuously bends the viewing ray according to the current local tangent space associated with the surface. Thus, it allows mapping a displacement map onto an arbitrary curved surface with more accurate silhouette. While our method is simple, it offers surprisingly good results over Curved Relief Map (CRM) [OP05] in many difficult or degenerated cases.
Real‐Time Depth‐of‐Field Rendering Using Point Splatting on Per‐Pixel Layers
Authors: Lee Sungkil , Kim Gerard Jounghyun , Choi Seungmoon 
Published: January 2009

AbstractWe present a real‐time method for rendering a depth‐of‐field effect based on the per‐pixel layered splatting where source pixels are scattered on one of the three layers of a destination pixel. In addition, the missing information behind foreground objects is filled with an additional image of the areas occluded by nearer objects. The method creates high‐quality depth‐of‐field results even in the presence of partial occlusion, without major artifacts often present in the previous real‐time methods. The method can also be applied to simulating defocused highlights. The entire framework is accelerated by GPU, enabling real‐time post‐processing for both off‐line and interactive applications.
Caustic Forecasting: Unbiased Estimation of Caustic Lighting for Global Illumination
Authors: Budge B. C. , Anderson J. C. , Joy K. I. 
Published: January 2009

AbstractWe present an unbiased method for generating caustic lighting using importance sampled Path Tracing with Caustic Forecasting. Our technique is part of a straightforward rendering scheme which extends the Illumination by Weak Singularities method to allow for fully unbiased global illumination with rapid convergence. A photon shooting preprocess, similar to that used in Photon Mapping, generates photons that interact with specular geometry. These photons are then clustered, effectively dividing the scene into regions which will contribute similar amounts of caustic lighting to the image. Finally, the photons are stored into spatial data structures associated with each cluster, and the clusters themselves are organized into a spatial data structure for fast searching. During rendering we use clusters to decide the caustic energy importance of a region, and use the local photons to aid in importance sampling, effectively reducing the number of samples required to capture caustic lighting.
HISTORICAL MEANINGFULNESS IN SHARED ACTION
Authors: SMITH STEVEN G. 
Published: January 2009

ABSTRACTWhy should past occurrences matter to us as such? Are they in fact meaningful in a specifically historical way, or do they only become meaningful in being connected to other sorts of meaning—political or speculative, for example—as many notable theorists imply? Ranke and Oakeshott affirmed a purely historical meaningfulness but left its nature unclear. The purpose of this essay is to confirm historical meaningfulness by arguing that our commanding practical interest in how we share action with other actors is distinctively engaged by presumed information about past occurrences. We recognize that past occurrences have determined the conditions of action sharing, constraining our practice with regard to which actors we share practical reality with and which compounding actions we may or must join in progress.
THE IMPACT OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY
Authors: DE BAETS ANTOON 
Published: January 2009

ABSTRACTThere is perhaps no text with a broader impact on our lives than the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It is strange, therefore, that historians have paid so little attention to the UDHR. I argue that its potential impact on the study of history is profound. After asking whether the UDHR contains a general view of history, I address the consequences of the UDHR for the rights and duties of historians, and explain how it deals with their subjects of study. I demonstrate that the UDHR is a direct source of five important rights for historians: the rights to free expression and information, to meet and found associations, to intellectual property, to academic freedom, and to silence. It is also an indirect source of three duties for historians: the duties to produce expert knowledge about the past, to disseminate it, and to teach about it. I discuss the limits to, and conflicts among, these rights and duties. The UDHR also has an impact on historians’ subjects of study: I argue that the UDHR applies to the living but not to the dead, and that, consequently, it is a compass for studying recent rather than remote historical injustice. Nevertheless, and although it is itself silent about historians’ core duties to find and tell the truth, the UDHR firmly supports an emerging imprescriptible right to the truth, which in crucial respects is nothing less than a right to history. If the UDHR is a “Magna Carta of all men everywhere,” it surely is one for all historians.
Serum and tissue expression of transforming growth factor beta 1 in psoriasis
Authors: Zaher H , Shaker OG , EL‐Komy MHM , El‐Tawdi A , Fawzi M , Kadry D 
Published: January 2009

AbstractBackground  In psoriasis, keratinocyte hyperplasia may be explained by imbalance of growth factors responsible for epidermal proliferation and altered metabolism of their receptors. Transforming growth factor‐beta 1 (TGF‐β1) implications in the pathogenesis of psoriasis can be attributed to several mechanisms besides keratinocyte cell cycle inhibition.Objectives  To evaluate the relation between serum and tissue levels of TGF‐β1 in psoriasis and their correlation with disease parameters.Patients and methods  Serum and punch biopsy of involved and non‐involved skin of 22 patients with psoriasis vulgaris and 10 controls were collected for quantification of TGF‐β1 by enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay kit.Results  Serum level of TGF‐β1 in psoriatic patients was higher than controls in a statistically non‐significant manner. Correlations between serum level of TGF‐β1 and extent of the disease (P = 0.007) and Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) score (P = 0.005) were observed. Mean tissue levels of TGF‐β1 were highest in psoriatic lesions in contrast to normal skin of psoriatic patients and healthy controls, but not statistically significant. Correlation between tissue levels of TGF‐β1 in non‐involved skin and extent of the disease (P = 0.007) and PASI score (P = 0.013) was detected.Correlation was detected between levels of TGF‐β1 in psoriatic plaques and serum of patients (P = 0.035), but not between levels of TGF‐β1 in non‐involved skin and serum.Conclusions  Tissue expression of TGF‐β1 in psoriasis may be affected by the stage of development of the lesion. The direct relation between TGF‐β1 in psoriatic plaques and serum imply that the mechanisms for TGF‐β1 production and release in both these compartments may be related.Conflicts of interestNone declared
Liposomes in dermatology today
Authors: De Leeuw J , De Vijlder HC , Bjerring P , Neumann HAM 
Published: January 2009

AbstractLiposomes are vesicles consisting of spherical phospholipid bi‐layers with specific properties making them useful for topical application of drugs. Liposome research has expanded considerably over the last 30 years and nowadays, it is possible to construct a wide range of liposomes varying in size, phospholipids composition and surface characteristics to suit the specific application for which they are intended. In dermatology, the topical application of liposomes has proven to be of therapeutic value. Liposomes can be used as carriers for hydrophilic as well as lipophilic therapeutic agents because of their amphipathic character. They may improve stabilization of instable drugs by encapsulating them and serve as penetration enhancers facilitating the transport of compounds that otherwise cannot penetrate the skin. Liposomes help in reducing skin irritation by sustaining the release of drugs and by hydration of the epidermis. They also have the potential to target drugs into the pilosebaceous structures and hence they have an additional advantage for treatment of hair follicle‐associated disorders. Clinical data indicate that 5‐ALA encapsulated in liposomes improves the quality of Fluorescence Diagnosis by ALA‐induced Porphyrins (FD) and optimizes the results of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT).Conflicts of interestNone declared
Cities, Europeanization and Multi‐level Governance: Governing Climate Change through Transnational Municipal Networks*
Authors: KERN KRISTINE , BULKELEY HARRIET 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis article focuses on a variant of multi‐level governance and Europeanization, i.e. the transnational networking of local authorities. Focusing on local climate change policy, the article examines how transnational municipal networks (TMNs) govern in the context of multi‐level European governance. We find that TMNs are networks of pioneers for pioneers.
The Power to Delay: The European Parliament's Influence in the Consultation Procedure*
Authors: KARDASHEVA RAYA 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis article analyses the European Parliament's legislative influence in the consultation procedure. It examines all (925) consultation proposals completed in the period 1 May 1999 to 30 April 2007. The article finds that through its ‘power of delay’ the European Parliament can substantially influence EU legislative outcomes alongside the Council and the Commission. In addition, the results demonstrate that EP influence in the consultation procedure is conditional on the support of the Commission, the type of issues contested and the ability of the European Parliament to link its opinions to co‐decision proposals.
Species‐dependent neuroprotection by activated protein C mutants with reduced anticoagulant activity
Authors: Guo Huang , Wang Yaoming , Singh Itender , Liu Dong , Fernández José A. , Griffin John H. , Chow Nienwen , Zlokovic Berislav V. 
Published: January 2009

AbstractActivated protein C (APC) is a protease with anticoagulant and cytoprotective activities. APC is neuroprotective in rodent models of stroke. But, an APC variant with reduced anticoagulant activity, 3K3A‐APC, compared to wild‐type APC shows greater neuroprotection with no risk for bleeding in stroke models. To determine whether 3K3A‐APC exhibits species‐dependent neuroprotection similar to that as seen with wild‐type APC, we studied murine and human recombinant 3K3A‐APC mutants which show approximately 80% reduced anticoagulant activity. Murine 3K3A‐APC (0.2 mg/kg i.v.) administered at 4 h after embolic stroke improved substantially functional outcome and reduced by 80% the infract volume 7 days after stroke. Human 3K3A‐APC was neuroprotective after embolic stroke in mice, but at significantly higher concentrations (i.e. 2 mg/kg i.v.). Species‐dependent neuroprotection, i.e. murine > human 3K3A‐APC, was confirmed in a mouse model of permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion. Human 3K3A‐APC had by fivefold greater cytoprotective activity than murine 3K3A‐APC in oxygen‐glucose deprivation model in human brain endothelial cells, whereas murine 3K3A‐APC was by 2.5‐fold more potent than human 3K3A‐APC in a mouse model of NMDA‐induced neuronal apoptosis. Thus, 3K3A‐APC exhibits species‐dependent neuroprotection which should be taken into account when designing human trials for ischemic stroke with APC mutants.
Role of the N‐terminal α‐helix in biogenesis of α7 nicotinic receptors
Authors: Castillo Mar , Mulet José , Aldea Marcos , Gerber Susana , Sala Salvador , Sala Francisco , Criado Manuel 
Published: January 2009

AbstractWe studied the role of the α‐helix present at the N‐terminus of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) subunits in the expression of functional channels. Deletion of this motif in α7 subunits abolished expression of nAChRs at the membrane of Xenopus oocytes. The same effect was observed upon substitution by homologous motifs of other ligand‐gated receptors. When residues from Gln4 to Tyr15 were individually mutated to proline, receptor expression strongly decreased or was totally abolished. Equivalent substitutions to alanine were less harmful, suggesting that proline‐induced break of the α‐helix is responsible for the low expression. Steady‐state levels of wild‐type and mutant subunits were similar but the formation of pentameric receptors was impaired in the latter. In addition, those mutants that reached the membrane showed a slightly increased internalization rate. Expression of α7 nAChRs in neuroblastoma cells confirmed that mutant subunits, although stable, were unable to reach the cell membrane. Analogous mutations in heteromeric nAChRs (α3β4 and α4β2) and 5‐HT3A receptors also abolished their expression at the membrane. We conclude that the N‐terminal α‐helix of nAChRs is an important requirement for receptor assembly and, therefore, for membrane expression.