bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Time‐to‐event prediction using survival analysis methods for Alzheimer's disease progression
Authors: Sharma Rahul , Anand Harsh , Badr Youakim , Qiu Robin G. 
Published: December 2021

AbstractIntroductionMany research studies have well investigated Alzheimer's disease (AD) detection and progression. However, the continuous‐time survival prediction of AD is not yet fully explored to support medical practitioners with predictive analytics. In this study, we develop a survival analysis approach to examine interactions between patients’ inherent temporal and medical patterns and predict the probability of the AD next stage progression during a time period. The likelihood of reaching the following AD stage is unique to a patient, helping the medical practitioner analyze the patient's condition and provide personalized treatment recommendations ahead of time.MethodologiesWe simulate the disease progression based on patient profiles using non‐linear survival methods—non‐linear Cox proportional hazard model (Cox‐PH) and neural multi‐task logistic regression (N‐MTLR). In addition, we evaluate the concordance index (C‐index) and Integrated Brier Score (IBS) to describe the evolution to the next stage of AD. For personalized forecasting of disease, we also developed deep neural network models using the dataset provided by the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center with their multiple‐visit details between 2005 and 2017.ResultsThe experiment results show that our N‐MTLR based survival models outperform the CoxPH models, the best of which gives Concordance‐Index of 0.79 and IBS of 0.09. We obtained 50 critical features out of 92 by applying recursive feature elimination and random forest techniques on the clinical data; the top ones include normal cognition and behavior, criteria for dementia, community affairs, etc. Our study demonstrates that selecting critical features can improve the effectiveness of probabilities at each time interval.ConclusionsThe proposed deep learning‐based survival method and model can be used by medical practitioners to predict the patients’ AD shift efficiently and recommend personalized treatment to mitigate or postpone the effects of AD. More generally, our proposed survival analysis approach for predicting disease stage shift can be used for other progressive diseases such as cancer, Huntington's disease, and scleroderma, just to mention a few, using the corresponding clinical data.
Systems biology of angiogenesis signaling: Computational models and omics
Authors: Zhang Yu , Wang Hanwen , Oliveira Rebeca Hannah M. , Zhao Chen , Popel Aleksander S. 
Published: December 2021

AbstractAngiogenesis is a highly regulated multiscale process that involves a plethora of cells, their cellular signal transduction, activation, proliferation, differentiation, as well as their intercellular communication. The coordinated execution and integration of such complex signaling programs is critical for physiological angiogenesis to take place in normal growth, development, exercise, and wound healing, while its dysregulation is critically linked to many major human diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and ocular disorders; it is also crucial in regenerative medicine. Although huge efforts have been devoted to drug development for these diseases by investigation of angiogenesis‐targeted therapies, only a few therapeutics and targets have proved effective in humans due to the innate multiscale complexity and nonlinearity in the process of angiogenic signaling. As a promising approach that can help better address this challenge, systems biology modeling allows the integration of knowledge across studies and scales and provides a powerful means to mechanistically elucidate and connect the individual molecular and cellular signaling components that function in concert to regulate angiogenesis. In this review, we summarize and discuss how systems biology modeling studies, at the pathway‐, cell‐, tissue‐, and whole body‐levels, have advanced our understanding of signaling in angiogenesis and thereby delivered new translational insights for human diseases.This article is categorized under:
Cardiovascular Diseases > Computational Models
Cancer > Computational Models
Playback Robot Programming Framework for Fiber Spraying Processes
Authors: Schmidt Edgar , Henrich Dominik 
Published: December 2021

AbstractRobot-based automation is still not widespread in small and medium-sized enterprises, since programming industrial robots is usually costly and only feasible by experts. This disadvantages can be resolved by using intuitive robot programming approaches like playback programming. At the same time, there are currently not automatized automatized, like fiber spraying. We present a novel approach in programming a robot system for fiber spraying processes, which extends a playback programming framework inspired by video editing concepts. The resulting framework allows the programming of also the periphery devices needed for the fiber spraying process. We evaluated the resulting programming framework to measure the intuitiveness in the use and show that the framework is not only able to program fiber spraying tasks but is also rather intuitive to use for domain experts.
Reinhold Niebuhr During the Time of the White Compromise
Authors: Brown Marvin T. 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThe story of how the theological ethicist, Reinhold Niebuhr, dealt with race during the “white compromise” (from after Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement) gives us a good picture of what will work and not work in re-directing American Prosperity toward a sustainable future. In his early years, Niebuhr argued against the Ku Klux Klan in Detroit, and supported sharecropper cooperatives in Arkansas. He guided his later ethical analysis of national and international groups by what he called “Christian realism,” which assumed that groups had limited capacity for doing good. At the height of his national status, he wrote books as though American history was the same as white history. He suggested caution in applying the Brown v. Board of Education decision to white families and after the civil rights movement had disrupted the “white compromise,” Niebuhr moved somewhat closer to Martin Luther King Jr.’s view of the “beloved community.”
Different Ways of Viewing an Organization
Authors: Cardona Pablo , Rey Carlos 
Published: December 2021

AbstractFrom the industrial revolution to the present, scholars, consultants and experts in different disciplines have tried to answer the fundamental question: What is a business? In this chapter, we structure these historical perspectives in the following groups: Mechanical, Organic and Cultural. The mechanical perspective provides the “rational logic” of planning and supervision. The organic perspective adds creativity and initiative. Finally, the cultural perspective promotes internal unity through a common purpose that harnesses the commitment and engagement of the company’s members. From the combination of the three perspectives, we introduce the “Integrated Organizational Model” as the conceptual foundation of management by missions (MBM).
Vorstellung des eigenen Patientengutes und Vergleich epidemiologischer Daten, anamnestisch vorgebrachter Beschwerden und klinischer Erstbefunde mit denen vergleichbar therapierter, aus der Literatur recherchierter Studiengruppen
Authors: Eichhorn Thomas 
Published: December 2021

ZusammenfassungEine Reihe von Publikationen befasst sich mit der Frage, welche Patienten-bezogenen epidemiologischen Daten und zeitgleich zum Hörsturz aufgetretenen Beschwerden auf die Höhe des initialen Hörverlustes wie auch den nach einer Therapie erreichten Hörerfolg Einfluss genommen haben können [29, 30, 33, 57, 65, 97, 101]. In diesem Kapitel soll es zunächst darum gehen, nach Patientenuntergruppen zu fahnden, bei denen sich vor Behandlungsbeginn die Ausgangslage in Bezug auf den Anfangshörverlust als besonders vorteilhaft resp. unvorteilhaft darstellt. Darüber hinaus interessierte uns, ob sich ggf. die Kombination des Auftretens einzelner Ausgangsparameter besonders günstig oder ungünstig auf die weitere Entwicklung der ISSNHL ausgewirkt hatte.
Banana and Mango Value Chains
Authors: Wardhan Harsh , Das Sandip , Gulati Ashok 
Published: December 2021

AbstractFruit crops are high-value agricultural crops and are mostly managed by individual farmers in India unlike in the West where large private corporations are involved in production and exports of fruit crops. India’s fruits production increased significantly from 28.6 million metric tonnes (MMT) in 1991–92 to 96.8 MMT in 2018–19. Among fruits, mango and bananas are the most important crops with 50% share in fruits acreage as well as value dominated by mango.
Plasma membrane perforation by GSDME during apoptosis-driven secondary necrosis
Authors: De Schutter Elke , Ramon Jana , Pfeuty Benjamin , De Tender Caroline , Stremersch Stephan , Raemdonck Koen , de Beeck Ken Op , Declercq Wim , Riquet Franck B. , Braeckmans Kevin , Vandenabeele Peter 
Published: December 2021

AbstractSecondary necrosis has long been perceived as an uncontrolled process resulting in total lysis of the apoptotic cell. Recently, it was shown that progression of apoptosis to secondary necrosis is regulated by Gasdermin E (GSDME), which requires activation by caspase-3. Although the contribution of GSDME in this context has been attributed to its pore-forming capacity, little is known about the kinetics and size characteristics of this. Here we report on the membrane permeabilizing features of GSDME by monitoring the influx and efflux of dextrans of different sizes into/from anti-Fas-treated L929sAhFas cells undergoing apoptosis-driven secondary necrosis. We found that GSDME accelerates cell lysis measured by SYTOX Blue staining but does not affect the exposure of phosphatidylserine on the plasma membrane. Furthermore, loss of GSDME expression clearly hampered the influx of fluorescently labeled dextrans while the efflux happened independently of the presence or absence of GSDME expression. Importantly, both in- and efflux of dextrans were dependent on their molecular weight. Altogether, our results demonstrate that GSDME regulates the passage of compounds together with other plasma membrane destabilizing subroutines.
Inflated 3D ConvNet context analysis for violence detection
Authors: Freire-Obregón David , Barra Paola , Castrillón-Santana Modesto , Marsico Maria De 
Published: December 2021

AbstractAccording to the Wall Street Journal, one billion surveillance cameras will be deployed around the world by 2021. This amount of information can be hardly managed by humans. Using a Inflated 3D ConvNet as backbone, this paper introduces a novel automatic violence detection approach that outperforms state-of-the-art existing proposals. Most of those proposals consider a pre-processing step to only focus on some regions of interest in the scene, i.e., those actually containing a human subject. In this regard, this paper also reports the results of an extensive analysis on whether and how the context can affect or not the adopted classifier performance. The experiments show that context-free footage yields substantial deterioration of the classifier performance (2% to 5%) on publicly available datasets. However, they also demonstrate that performance stabilizes in context-free settings, no matter the level of context restriction applied. Finally, a cross-dataset experiment investigates the generalizability of results obtained in a single-collection experiment (same dataset used for training and testing) to cross-collection settings (different datasets used for training and testing).
Ski-geometric parameters do not differ between ACL injury mechanisms in recreational alpine skiing
Authors: Posch Markus , Ruedl Gerhard , Greier Klaus , Faulhaber Martin , Tecklenburg Katja , Schranz Alois , Burtscher Martin 
Published: December 2021

AbstractPurposeIt is not known so far if ski-equipment-related factors differ between the ACL injury mechanisms, potentially influencing the circumstances and causes of falling, finally resulting in ACL injury. More specifically focusing on the injury mechanisms will provide a deeper understanding of injury causation. The aim of the study was to evaluate whether ACL injury mechanisms in recreational alpine skiing differ with regard to ski-geometric parameters, self-reported circumstances and causes of accident and injury severity.MethodsAmong a cohort of 392 ACL-injured (57.9% females) skiers, age, sex, height, weight, skill level, risk-taking behavior, circumstances and causes of accident, and ACL injury severity were collected by questionnaire. Additionally, patients had to recall their type of fall (ACL injury mechanism) by classifying forward and backward falls with and without body rotation. Ski length, side cut radius and widths of the tip, waist and tail were directly notated from the ski.ResultsThe forward fall with body rotation was the most common reported ACL injury mechanism (63%). A riskier behavior was associated with forward falls without body rotation. Ski-geometric parameters did not significantly influence the type of ACL injury mechanism. Regarding accident characteristics, catching an edge of the ski was more frequent (p < 0.001) the cause for forward falls (75% and 67%) when compared to the backward falls (46 and 15%) and executing a turn was the most frequent action in all falls (39–68%). A complete rupture of the ACL (66–70%) was more commonly reported than a partial tear (30–34%) among all four non-contact ACL injury mechanisms (n.s.).ConclusionIn contrast to risk-taking behavior and accident characteristics, ski-geometric parameters and injury severity do not significantly differ between ACL injury mechanisms in recreational skiing. Thus, an individual skiing style seems to have more impact on ACL injury mechanisms than ski equipment. Future studies should evaluate potential effects of ski geometry on the incidence of ACL injury.Level of evidenceIII.
Random Unitary Representations of Surface Groups I: Asymptotic Expansions
Authors: Magee Michael 
Published: December 2021

AbstractIn this paper, we study random representations of fundamental groups of surfaces into special unitary groups. The random model we use is based on a symplectic form on moduli space due to Atiyah, Bott and Goldman. Let$$\Sigma _{g}$$Σgdenote a topological surface of genus$$g\ge 2$$g≥2. We establish the existence of a largenasymptotic expansion, to any fixed order, for the expected value of the trace of any fixed element of$$\pi _{1}(\Sigma _{g})$$π1(Σg)under a random representation of$$\pi _{1}(\Sigma _{g})$$π1(Σg)into$$\mathsf {SU}(n)$$SU(n). Each such expected value involves a contribution from all irreducible representations of$$\mathsf {SU}(n)$$SU(n). The main technical contribution of the paper is effective analytic control of the entire contribution from irreducible representations outside finite sets of carefully chosen rational families of representations.
Regularized ridge regression models to estimate static elastic moduli from wireline measurements: case study from Southern Iraq
Authors: Alkinani Husam H. , Al-Hameedi Abo Taleb T. , Dunn-Norman Shari , Aldin Munir , Gokaraju Deepak , Guedez Andreina , Alattar Atheer M. 
Published: December 2021

AbstractElastic moduli such as Young’s modulus (E), Poisson’s ratio (v), and bulk modulus (K) are vital to creating geomechanical models for wellbore stability, hydraulic fracturing, sand production, etc. Due to the difficulty of obtaining core samples and performing rock testing, alternatively, wireline measurements can be used to estimate dynamic moduli. However, dynamic moduli are significantly different from elastic moduli due to many factors. In this paper, correlations for three zones (Nahr Umr shale, Zubair shale, and Zubair sandstone) located in southern Iraq were created to estimate static E, K, and ν from dynamic data. Core plugs from the aforementioned three zones alongside wireline measurements for the same sections were acquired. Single-stage triaxial (SST) tests with CT scans were executed for the core plugs. The data were separated into two parts; training (70%), and testing (30%) to ensure the models can be generalized to new data. Regularized ridge regression models were created to estimate static E, K, and ν from dynamic data (wireline measurements). The shrinkage parameter (α) was selected for each model based on an iterative process, where the goal is to ensure having the smallest error. The results showed that all models had testing R2 ranging between 0.92 and 0.997 and consistent with the training results. All models of E, K, and ν were linear besides ν for the Zubair sandstone and shale which were second-degree polynomial. Furthermore, root means squared error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) were utilized to assess the error of the models. Both RMSE and MAE were consistently low in training and testing without a large discrepancy. Thus, with the regularization of ridge regression and consistent low error during the training and testing, it can be concluded that the proposed models can be generalized to new data and no overfitting can be observed. The proposed models for Nahr Umr shale, Zubair shale, and Zubair sandstone can be utilized to estimate E, K, and ν based on readily available dynamic data which can contribute to creating robust geomechanical models for hydraulic fracturing, sand production, wellbore stability, etc.
Assessment of Quality of Life, Sexual Quality of Life, and Pain Symptoms in Deep Infiltrating Endometriosis Patients with or Without Associated Adenomyosis and the Influence of a Flexible Extended Combined Oral Contraceptive Regimen: Results of a Prospective, Observational Study
Authors: Alcalde Ana María , Martínez-Zamora María Ángeles , Gracia Meritxell , Ros Cristina , Rius Mariona , Castelo-Branco Camil , Carmona Francisco 
Published: December 2021

ABSTRACTBackgroundThe quality of life of women with deep infiltrating endometriosis (DIE) is impaired and may improve with combined oral contraceptives (COCs).AimTo compare the overall and sexual quality of life of patients diagnosed with DIE with or without associated adenomyosis (AD) with that of healthy controls and determine the influence of a COC containing 2 mg dienogest/30 μg ethinyl estradiol on these aspects.MethodsWe enrolled 42 women diagnosed with DIE; 31 diagnosed with DIE + AD by transvaginal ultrasound, and 39 non-AD/DIE controls. All patients were interviewed regarding pain symptoms (dysmenorrhea, dyspareunia, dyschezia, and dysuria), heavy menstrual bleeding using the Pictorial Blood Loss Assessment Chart, quality of life using the Short Form-36 questionnaire (SF-36), and sexual quality of life using the Sexual Quality of Life-Female questionnaire (SQOL-F) and the Brief Profile of Female Sexual Function (B-PFSF) before starting COCs and after 12 months of treatment.OutcomesThere was significant improvement in overall and sexual quality of life after treatment in DIE and DIE + AD patients.ResultsNon-AD/DIE controls showed significantly higher scores in the B-PFSF, the SQOL-F and the SF-36 questionnaires (P &lt; .05) at baseline versus the other groups. DIE + AD patients showed poorer quality of sexual life and greater intensity in pain symptoms compared with DIE patients. After 12 months of treatment, there was a significant improvement in overall and sexual quality of life in the DIE and DIE + AD groups, with improvement in sexual quality of life being slightly greater in DIE + AD patients compared with DIE patients. Pain symptoms also decreased in both groups.Clinical ImplicationsPatients with DIE + AD showed greater impairment in overall and sexual quality of life compared with patients with isolated DIE which seems to improve with a COC containing 2 mg dienogest/30 μg ethinyl estradiol.Strengths & limitationsStrengths include the long-term follow up, assessment of the impact of two associated conditions, and administration of the same COC in all patients. Limitations include the relatively small sample size, and the fact that we did not assess the effectiveness of a flexible extended COC regimen containing 2 mg dienogest/30 μg ethinyl estradiol since the groups were different at baseline.ConclusionPatients diagnosed with DIE with or without AD have a decreased quality of life which may improve with a COC containing 2 mg dienogest/30 μg ethinyl estradiol. Further research is needed to confirm our results.
Reduction in trabecular meshwork stem cell content in donor eyes with primary open angle glaucoma
Authors: Sundaresan Yogapriya , Manivannan Lakshmi Priya , Radhakrishnan Shanthi , Ramasamy Krishnadas Subbiah , Veerappan Muthukkaruppan , Chidambaranathan Gowri Priya 
Published: December 2021

AbstractWe previously identified and characterized human trabecular meshwork stem cells (TMSCs) based on high expression of ABCG2/p75 positivity and high nucleus to cytoplasmic ratio. These TMSCs expressing high ABCG2 and p75 were located to the insert region of the human TM. Additionally, we demonstrated an age-related reduction in the TMSC content which was significantly associated with TM cell loss. In continuation, this study was aimed to determine the TMSC content in glaucomatous donor eyes wherein a drastic reduction in TM cellularity has already been reported. Anterior segments from known glaucomatous (n = 6) and age-matched normal (n = 8) donors were dissected into four quadrants. A minimum of three sections from each quadrant were used for histopathological analysis as well as immunostaining. Analysis of hematoxylin and eosin-stained sections from glaucomatous tissues revealed a decrease in total TM cellularity, thickening of trabecular beams, fusion of trabeculae, absence of patent Schlemm’s canal compared to age-matched controls. In addition, the TM thickness at various positions of the meshwork and the coronal as well as the meridional diameters of the Schlemm’s canal were observed to be significantly reduced in glaucomatous eyes. Further, sections from both the groups were immunostained for universal stem cell marker ABCG2 and neural crest derived stem cell marker p75. The images were acquired using Leica SP8 confocal microscope. Quantification of total TM cellularity based on nuclear counterstain (mean ± SD) using ImageJ identified 69.33 ± 12.77 cells/section in control eyes. In glaucomatous donors, the TM cellularity was found to be reduced significantly to 41.83 ± 9.0 (p = 0.0007). In addition, a reduction in the percentage of TMSCs (cells with high ABCG2 expression and p75 positivity) was evident in glaucomatous donors (0.14 ± 0.17%) compared to age-matched controls (4.73 ± 5.46%) (p = 0.064). Thus, the present study confirmed the significant decline in TM cellularity and a reducing trend in the TMSC content, though this reduction was non-significant in glaucomatous donor eyes. Further studies are essential to elucidate the role of TMSCs in the pathogenesis of primary open angle glaucoma.