cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Effect of ivacaftor on mucociliary clearance and clinical outcomes in cystic fibrosis patients with G551D-CFTR
Creators: name: Locke, L.W.
name: Donaldson, S.H.
name: Flanagan, B.
name: Ceppe, A.
name: Corcoran, T.E.
name: Bhambhvani, P.
name: Bennett, W.D.
name: Boyle, M.
name: Mogayzel, P.J., Jr
name: Zeman, K.
name: Pilewski, J.M.
name: Laube, B.L.
name: Rowe, S.M.
name: Zeitlin, P.L.
name: Myerburg, M.M.
Publisher: name: NLM (Medline)
Year: 2018

description: BACKGROUND: The ability to restore cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) function with effective small molecule modulators in patients with cystic fibrosis provides an opportunity to study relationships between CFTR ion channel function, organ level physiology, and clinical outcomes. METHODS: We performed a multisite, prospective, observational study of ivacaftor, prescribed in patients with the G551D-CFTR mutation. Measurements of lung mucociliary clearance (MCC) were performed before and after treatment initiation (1 and 3 months), in parallel with clinical outcome measures. RESULTS: Marked acceleration in whole lung, central lung, and peripheral lung MCC was observed 1 month after beginning ivacaftor and was sustained at 3 months. Improvements in MCC correlated with improvements in forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1) but not sweat chloride or symptom scores. CONCLUSIONS: Restoration of CFTR activity with ivacaftor led to significant improvements in MCC. This physiologic assessment provides a means to characterize future CFTR modulator therapies and may help to predict improvements in lung function. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicialTrials.gov, NCT01521338. FUNDING: CFF Therapeutics (GOAL11K1).
Homogeneity of Aerosol Deposition and Mucociliary Clearance are Improved Following Ivacaftor Treatment in Cystic Fibrosis
Creators: name: Zeman, K.L.
name: Wu, J.
name: Bennett, W.D.
name: Sharpless, G.
name: Laube, B.L.
name: Mogayzel, P.J.
name: Donaldson, S.H.
Publisher: name: Mary Ann Liebert Inc.
Year: 2018

description: Background: Using planar gamma scintigraphy of inhaled radioaerosols, we have developed new analytical methods for assessing homogeneity of aerosol deposition and time-dependent particle clearance on a pixel-by-pixel basis, and applied them to a therapeutic cystic fibrosis (CF) study. Methods: At baseline and 1 month after beginning treatment with ivacaftor, a cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator modulator for CF patients with at least one copy of the G551D mutation (n = 13), initial deposition and subsequent mucociliary clearance (MCC) of radiolabeled particles ( 99m Technetium-sulfur colloid, 5 μm mass median aerodynamic diameter) inhaled under controlled breathing conditions were measured. Results: Improved homogeneity of deposition, that is, decreased areas of higher and lower particle deposition in the lungs, was observed following ivacaftor treatment. The mean number ratio (NR) of pixels with higher deposition, relative to lung size, decreased from 0.14 to 0.09 (p = 0.003) and mean NR of colder pixels decreased from 0.23 to 0.19 (p = 0.004). Particle clearance was also improved following treatment, with mean MCC through 60 minutes equal to 12% versus 24%, without and with treatment, respectively (p = 0.010). Pixel-level analysis of MCC showed that (1) the fraction of pixels clearing >30% at 60 minutes was increased from 0.13 to 0.32 (p = 0.007); and (2) the fraction of pixels clearing <5% at 60 minutes was decreased from 0.54 to 0.37 (p = 0.014), indicating an overall recruitment of more fast-clearing lung regions with ivacaftor treatment. Conclusion: These detailed pixel analyses of deposition and clearance homogeneity may supplement traditional methods that use large regions of interest for assessing efficacy and mechanisms of therapeutic intervention in patients with airways disease.
A comparative study on low-memory iterative solvers for FFT-based homogenization of periodic media
Creators: name: Mishra, Nachiketa
name: Vondřejc, Jaroslav
name: Zeman, Jan
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph)
subject: Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
subject: Numerical Analysis (math.NA)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Mathematics

description: In this paper, we assess the performance of four iterative algorithms for solving non-symmetric rank-deficient linear systems arising in the FFT-based homogenization of heterogeneous materials defined by digital images. Our framework is based on the Fourier-Galerkin method with exact and approximate integrations that has recently been shown to generalize the Lippmann-Schwinger setting of the original work by Moulinec and Suquet from 1994. It follows from this variational format that the ensuing system of linear equations can be solved by general-purpose iterative algorithms for symmetric positive-definite systems, such as the Richardson, the Conjugate gradient, and the Chebyshev algorithms, that are compared here to the Eyre-Milton scheme - the most efficient specialized method currently available. Our numerical experiments, carried out for two-dimensional elliptic problems, reveal that the Conjugate gradient algorithm is the most efficient option, while the Eyre-Milton method performs comparably to the Chebyshev semi-iteration. The Richardson algorithm, equivalent to the still widely used original Moulinec-Suquet solver, exhibits the slowest convergence. Besides this, we hope that our study highlights the potential of the well-established techniques of numerical linear algebra to further increase the efficiency of FFT-based homogenization methods.
description: 23 pages, 11 figures, 1 table; minor revision after the first review
(411) Mary Blair
Creators: name: Professions, Victorian
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: 220201 Business and Labour History
subject: FOS: Philosophy, ethics and religion
subject: History
subject: 140203 Economic History
subject: FOS: Economics and business

description: This three-year research project began in January 2014 and investigated whether, during the Victorian period, the professions formed a distinct self-sustaining social group with its own mores and values. The project looked at 16,000 individuals drawn from census data for Alnwick, Brighton, Bristol, Dundee, Greenock, Leeds, Merthyr Tydfil, Morpeth, and Winchester. The research project was funded by the UK Economic & Social Research Council and was based at the Universities of Oxford and Northumbria.
Additional file 1 of Adolescent girls’ explanations of high rates of low mood and anxiety in their population: a co-produced qualitative study
Creators: name: Demkowicz, Ola
name: Jefferson, Rebecca
name: Nanda, Pratyasha
name: Foulkes, Lucy
name: Lam, Jo
name: Pryjmachuk, Steven
name: Evans, Rhiannon
name: Dubicka, Bernadka
name: Neill, Liz
name: Winter, Laura Anne
name: Nnamani, Georgina
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2025
Subjects: subject: Biotechnology
subject: Sociology
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: Science Policy
subject: Mental Health

description: Supplementary Material 1
Warm exo-Zodi from cool exo-Kuiper belts: the significance of P-R drag and the inference of intervening planets
Creators: name: Kennedy, Grant M.
name: Piette, Anjali
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Poynting-Robertson drag has been considered an ineffective mechanism for delivering dust to regions interior to the cool Kuiper belt analogues seen around other Sun-like stars. This conclusion is however based on the very large contrast in dust optical depth between the parent belt and the interior regions that results from the dominance of collisions over drag in systems with detectable cool belts. Here, we show that the levels of habitable zone dust arising from detectable Kuiper belt analogues can be tens to a few hundreds of times greater than the optical depth in the Solar Zodiacal cloud. Dust enhancements of more than a few tens of `zodi' are expected to hinder future Earth-imaging missions, but relatively few undetectable Kuiper belts result in such levels, particularly around stars older than a few Gyr. Thus, current mid to far-IR photometric surveys have already identified most of the 20-25% of nearby stars where P-R drag from outer belts could seriously impact Earth-imaging. The LBTI should easily detect such warm dust around many nearby stars with outer belts, and will provide insight into currently unclear details of the competition between P-R drag and collisions. Given sufficient confidence in future models, the inevitability of P-R drag means that the non-detection of warm dust where detectable levels were expected could be used to infer additional dust removal process, the most likely being the presence of intervening planets.
description: accepted to MNRAS
(412) Elizabeth Blair
Creators: name: Professions, Victorian
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: 220201 Business and Labour History
subject: FOS: Philosophy, ethics and religion
subject: History
subject: 140203 Economic History
subject: FOS: Economics and business

description: This three-year research project began in January 2014 and investigated whether, during the Victorian period, the professions formed a distinct self-sustaining social group with its own mores and values. The project looked at 16,000 individuals drawn from census data for Alnwick, Brighton, Bristol, Dundee, Greenock, Leeds, Merthyr Tydfil, Morpeth, and Winchester. The research project was funded by the UK Economic & Social Research Council and was based at the Universities of Oxford and Northumbria.
FAUNE DES SÉDIMENTS MEUBLES INTERTIDAUX DU BASSIN D'ARCACHON. Systématique et Écologie
Creators: name: SALVAT, Bernard
Publisher: name: Station Biologique de Roscoff (SBR)
Year: 1962

description: From 1959 to 1962 some twenty open coast and relatively sheltered beaches were investigated along the Bassin d’Arcachon. Three of them were more thoroughly prospected every month on a whole year-round survey. An abundant fauna was collected, and an account is given of the crustaceans, mollusks and echinoderms occurring in these soft sand intertidal sediments.
A few zostera-area dwelling species and some brackish forms were occasionally found along these surveyed beaches; they are also listed in this paper, most of them are new records for the Arcachon area. Ecotope, occurence and geographical distributions are given for each intertidal species. Place of capture is accurately described with data on intertidal zonation and type of deposit. The occurrence in numbers of each species was worked out from quantitatively controlled and monthly collected samples from « La Vigne » beach on a year round survey (including 18 collecting stations, 36 meters wide intertidal area, 4,40 meters tidal range). From such sampling the level and the month of optimum density are deduced for every intertidal species (number of organisms per square meter is given for each of these peculiar species).
Special reference is made on Branchiostoma lanceolatum which was collected several times in the Bassin d’Arcachon.
Hypertonic saline has a prolonged effect on mucociliary clearance in adults with cystic fibrosis
Creators: name: Trimble, A.T.
name: Zeman, K.L.
name: Bennett, W.D.
name: Laube, B.L.
name: Donaldson, S.H.
name: Wu, J.
name: Whitney Brown, A.
name: Ceppe, A.
name: Waltz, D.
name: Lechtzin, N.
Publisher: name: Elsevier B.V.
Year: 2018

description: Background: Inhaled hypertonic saline (HS) has been shown to increase mucociliary clearance (MCC) and improve clinical outcomes in adults and adolescents with cystic fibrosis (CF). However, in younger children with CF, a large study failed to demonstrate clinical benefits. This discrepancy could reflect pharmacodynamic differences in the MCC response to HS in different populations. We previously demonstrated the absence of a sustained effect of HS on MCC in healthy adults and in this study sought to characterize the durability of the MCC response to HS in adults with CF. Methods: At two study sites, MCC was measured in CF adults using gamma scintigraphy during three separate visits: at baseline, 15 min, and 4 h after a single dose of HS (7% NaCl, 4 mL). Particle clearance rates at these visits were used to assess the durability of the MCC response to HS. Results: The average 90-minute clearance rate measured 4 h after HS was significantly increased (21.81% ± 12.8) when compared to baseline (13.77% ± 8.7, p =.048) and showed no apparent slowing relative to the rate measured 15 min after HS. While not all subjects responded to HS, the acute response strongly predicted the sustained effect in these subjects (r = 0.896, p <.0001). Conclusions: These results suggest that, in contrast to healthy adults, a single dose of HS has a prolonged effect on MCC in adults with CF, which lasts at least 4 h. This may explain its clinical efficacy in this population.
Synthesizing explainable counterfactual policies for algorithmic recourse with program synthesis
Creators: name: De Toni, Giovanni
name: Lepri, Bruno
name: Passerini, Andrea
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Being able to provide counterfactual interventions - sequences of actions we would have had to take for a desirable outcome to happen - is essential to explain how to change an unfavourable decision by a black-box machine learning model (e.g., being denied a loan request). Existing solutions have mainly focused on generating feasible interventions without providing explanations on their rationale. Moreover, they need to solve a separate optimization problem for each user. In this paper, we take a different approach and learn a program that outputs a sequence of explainable counterfactual actions given a user description and a causal graph. We leverage program synthesis techniques, reinforcement learning coupled with Monte Carlo Tree Search for efficient exploration, and rule learning to extract explanations for each recommended action. An experimental evaluation on synthetic and real-world datasets shows how our approach generates effective interventions by making orders of magnitude fewer queries to the black-box classifier with respect to existing solutions, with the additional benefit of complementing them with interpretable explanations.
title: LGRBwissen – the new geoscientific portal for Baden-Württemberg
Creators: name:  Rupf ,  Isabel
name:  Baumann ,  Frank
Publisher: name: Deutsche Geologische Gesellschaft - Geologische Vereinigung e.V. (DGGV)
Year: 2021

description: Since 2019, the LGRBwissen internet portal provides freely accessible and reviewed geoscientific information for the state of Baden-Württemberg. With LGRBwissen, the State Office for Geology, Natural Resources and Mining (LGRB) is expanding its product portfolio with supplemental descriptions of digital geoscientific data (GeoLa). Although LGRBwissen is primarily designed for professional customers of the LGRB, easily understandable information for the interested public is offered in several sections. The core of the portal is a tripartite search tool. Besides using a free text search, it is possible to filter thematically by subject and to search spatially. The spatial search is possible by digitizing a polygon in a map application or by entering a location name directly. The latter opens a list with pre-configured administrative units, such as municipalities or districts. In the central part of each page, there is an interactive map with an overview of the specific geoscientific topic described. The map navigation follows established internet standards. The level of generalisation is automatically depending on the map scale. In addition to the geoscientific descriptions, LGRBwissen contains a geoscientific glossary, picture galleries, links to the detailed information about the mapping units and further publications of the LGRB downloadable as PDF files. As a modern and attractive tool, LGRBwissen has significantly improved the knowledge transfer from the LGRB to its customers. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary linkage of contents creates numerous synergy effects for administration, science, education, and business. LGRBwissen can be reached at https://lgrbwissen.lgrb-bw.de.
Ensemble of Opinion Dynamics Models to Understand the Role of the Undecided in the Vaccination Debate
Creators: name: Lenti, Jacopo
name: Ruffo, Giancarlo
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
subject: Computers and Society (cs.CY)
subject: Social and Information Networks (cs.SI)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: We present three models used to describe the recruitment of the undecided population by pro-vax and no-vax factions. Starting from real-world data of Facebook pages, we compare three opinion dynamics models that catch different behaviours of the undecided population. The first one is a variation of the SIS model, where undecided position is considered indifferent. Neutrals can be "infected" by one of the two extreme factions, joining their side, and they "recover" when they lose interest in the debate and go back to neutrality. The second model is a three parties Voters model: neutral pages represent a centrist position. They lean their original ideas, that are different from both the other parties. The last is the Bilingual model adapted to the vaccination debate: neutral individuals are in agreement with both pro-, ad anti-vax factions, with a position of compromise between the extremes ("bilingualism''). If they have a one-sided neighbourhood, the convenience to agree with both parties comes out, and bi-linguists can become mono-linguists. Our results depicts an agreement between the three models: anti-vax opinion propagates more than pro-vax, thanks to an initial strategic position in the online social network (even if they start with a smaller population). While most of the pro-vaccines nodes are segregated in their own communities, no-vaccines ones are entangled at the core of the network, where the majority of undecided population is located. In the last section, we propose and compare some policies that could be applied on the network to prevent anti-vax overcome: they lead us to conclude that censoring strategies are not effective, as well as segregating scenarios based on unfollowing decisions, while the addition of links in the network favours the containment of the pro-vax domain, reducing the distance between pro-vaxxers and undecided population.
SUR QUELQUES POLYCHÈTES SYLLIDIENS DES SABLES DE LA RÉGION DE ROSCOFF AVEC DESCRIPTION DE DEUX NOUVELLES ESPÈCES
Creators: name: GIDHOLM, Lennart
Publisher: name: Station Biologique de Roscoff (SBR)
Year: 1962

description: This paper describes two new species of syllids and comments upon two which are not previously recorded from the Channel area : 1) Eurysyllis brevipes (Hartmann-Schröder), described from the Mediterranean under the new generic name of Plakosyllis, which is reported here as a synonym ; 2) Dioplosyllis cirrosa n. gen., n. sp., a comparatively big worm, characterized by a new type ofpharyngeal armature and by extremely long dorsal cirri; 3) Brania swedmarki n. sp., a small interstitial species; 4) Sphaerosyllis tetralix Eliason, previously known from Scandinavian waters.
All the species have been obtained in sand from stations located at depths of more than 10 metres. In addition, Sphaerosyllis tetralix has been takenbetween tide-marks on different substrata. There follows a list of other syllids from a locality with Amphioxus-sand.
Cyber Mobility Mirror for Enabling Cooperative Driving Automation in Mixed Traffic: A Co-Simulation Platform
Creators: name: Bai, Zhengwei
name: Wu, Guoyuan
name: Qi, Xuewei
name: Liu, Yongkang
name: Oguchi, Kentaro
name: Barth, Matthew J.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Software Engineering (cs.SE)
subject: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Endowed with automation and connectivity, Connected and Automated Vehicles are meant to be a revolutionary promoter for Cooperative Driving Automation. Nevertheless, CAVs need high-fidelity perception information on their surroundings, which is available but costly to collect from various onboard sensors as well as vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. Therefore, authentic perception information based on high-fidelity sensors via a cost-effective platform is crucial for enabling CDA-related research, e.g., cooperative decision-making or control. Most state-of-the-art traffic simulation studies for CAVs rely on situation-awareness information by directly calling on intrinsic attributes of the objects, which impedes the reliability and fidelity of the assessment of CDA algorithms. In this study, a \textit{Cyber Mobility Mirror (CMM)} Co-Simulation Platform is designed for enabling CDA by providing authentic perception information. The \textit{CMM} Co-Simulation Platform can emulate the real world with a high-fidelity sensor perception system and a cyber world with a real-time rebuilding system acting as a "\textit{Mirror}" of the real-world environment. Concretely, the real-world simulator is mainly in charge of simulating the traffic environment, sensors, as well as the authentic perception process. The mirror-world simulator is responsible for rebuilding objects and providing their information as intrinsic attributes of the simulator to support the development and evaluation of CDA algorithms. To illustrate the functionality of the proposed co-simulation platform, a roadside LiDAR-based vehicle perception system for enabling CDA is prototyped as a study case. Specific traffic environments and CDA tasks are designed for experiments whose results are demonstrated and analyzed to show the performance of the platform.
description: Accepted by the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine
Asymptotic Error Free Partitioning over Noisy Boolean Multiaccess Channels
Creators: name: Wu, Shuhang
name: Wei, Shuangqing
name: Wang, Yue
name: Vaidyanathan, Ramachandran
name: Yuan, Jian
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Information Theory (cs.IT)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: In this paper, we consider the problem of partitioning active users in a manner that facilitates multi-access without collision. The setting is of a noisy, synchronous, Boolean, multi-access channel where $K$ active users (out of a total of $N$ users) seek to access. A solution to the partition problem places each of the $N$ users in one of $K$ groups (or blocks) such that no two active nodes are in the same block. We consider a simple, but non-trivial and illustrative case of $K=2$ active users and study the number of steps $T$ used to solve the partition problem. By random coding and a suboptimal decoding scheme, we show that for any $T\geq (C_1 +ξ_1)\log N$, where $C_1$ and $ξ_1$ are positive constants (independent of $N$), and $ξ_1$ can be arbitrary small, the partition problem can be solved with error probability $P_e^{(N)} \to 0$, for large $N$. Under the same scheme, we also bound $T$ from the other direction, establishing that, for any $T \leq (C_2 - ξ_2) \log N$, the error probability $P_e^{(N)} \to 1$ for large $N$; again $C_2$ and $ξ_2$ are constants and $ξ_2$ can be arbitrarily small. These bounds on the number of steps are lower than the tight achievable lower-bound in terms of $T \geq (C_g +ξ)\log N $ for group testing (in which all active users are identified, rather than just partitioned). Thus, partitioning may prove to be a more efficient approach for multi-access than group testing.
description: This paper was submitted in June 2014 to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and is under review now
(409) Robert blair
Creators: name: Professions, Victorian
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: 220201 Business and Labour History
subject: FOS: Philosophy, ethics and religion
subject: History
subject: 140203 Economic History
subject: FOS: Economics and business

description: This three-year research project began in January 2014 and investigated whether, during the Victorian period, the professions formed a distinct self-sustaining social group with its own mores and values. The project looked at 16,000 individuals drawn from census data for Alnwick, Brighton, Bristol, Dundee, Greenock, Leeds, Merthyr Tydfil, Morpeth, and Winchester. The research project was funded by the UK Economic & Social Research Council and was based at the Universities of Oxford and Northumbria.
The Norwegian Parliamentary Speech Corpus
Creators: name: Solberg, Per Erik
name: Ortiz, Pablo
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Computation and Language (cs.CL)
subject: Sound (cs.SD)
subject: Audio and Speech Processing (eess.AS)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

description: The Norwegian Parliamentary Speech Corpus (NPSC) is a speech dataset with recordings of meetings from Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament. It is the first, publicly available dataset containing unscripted, Norwegian speech designed for training of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. The recordings are manually transcribed and annotated with language codes and speakers, and there are detailed metadata about the speakers. The transcriptions exist in both normalized and non-normalized form, and non-standardized words are explicitly marked and annotated with standardized equivalents. To test the usefulness of this dataset, we have compared an ASR system trained on the NPSC with a baseline system trained on only manuscript-read speech. These systems were tested on an independent dataset containing spontaneous, dialectal speech. The NPSC-trained system performed significantly better, with a 22.9% relative improvement in word error rate (WER). Moreover, training on the NPSC is shown to have a "democratizing" effect in terms of dialects, as improvements are generally larger for dialects with higher WER from the baseline system.
description: 6 pages, submitted to LREC 2022
Regional Ventilation Is the Main Determinant of Alveolar Deposition of Coarse Particles in the Supine Healthy Human Lung during Tidal Breathing
Creators: name: Zeman, K.L.
name: Darquenne, C.
name: Bennett, W.D.
name: Prisk, G.K.
name: Sá, R.C.
Publisher: name: Mary Ann Liebert Inc.
Year: 2017

description: Background: To quantify the relationship between regional lung ventilation and coarse aerosol deposition in the supine healthy human lung, we used oxygen-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging and planar gamma scintigraphy in seven subjects. Methods: Regional ventilation was measured in the supine posture in a 15 mm sagittal slice of the right lung. Deposition was measured by using planar gamma scintigraphy (coronal scans, 40 cm FOV) immediately postdeposition, 1 hour 30 minutes and 22 hours after deposition of 99mTc-labeled particles (4.9 μm MMAD, GSD 2.5), inhaled in the supine posture (flow 0.5 L/s, 15 breaths/min). The distribution of retained particles at different times was used to infer deposition in different airway regions, with 22 hours representing alveolar deposition. The fraction of total slice ventilation per quartile of lung height from the lung apex to the dome of the diaphragm at functional residual capacity was computed, and co-registered with deposition data - apices aligned - using a transmission scan as reference. The ratio of fractional alveolar deposition to fractional ventilation of each quartile (r) was used to evaluate ventilation and deposition matching (r > 1, regional aerosol deposition fraction larger than regional ventilation fraction). Results: r was not significantly different from 1 for all regions (1.04 ± 0.25, 1.08 ± 0.22, 1.03 ± 0.17, 0.92 ± 0.13, apex to diaphragm, p > 0.40) at the alveolar level (r22h). For retention times r0h and r1h30, only the diaphragmatic region at r1h30 differed significantly from 1. Conclusions: These results support the hypothesis that alveolar deposition is directly proportional to ventilation for ∼5 μm particles that are inhaled in the supine posture and are consistent with previous simulation predictions that show that convective flow is the main determinant of aerosol transport to the lung periphery.
Mucociliary clearance as an outcome measure for cystic fibrosis clinical research
Creators: name: Laube, B.L.
name: Donaldson, S.H.
name: Corcoran, T.E.
name: Bennett, W.D.
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2007

description: Current concepts of cystic fibrosis (CF) pathophysiology link ion transport abnormalities to reduced airway surface liquid (ASL) hydration and impaired mucus clearance. It is likely that correction of the defects that cause ASL dehydration will prevent degradation of mucus clearance, thereby preventing the initiation and/or progression of CF lung disease. A number of novel therapeutic agents aimed at the earliest steps in disease pathogenesis are now under development for the treatment of CF lung disease. Consequently, there is a tremendous need to develop methods that directly assess the effects of these agents on the underlying pathophysiologic process in the target organ. The measurement of mucociliary clearance (MCC) is a highly biologically relevant outcome, but one that is in need of further development. Here, we describe important methodologic aspects of MCC measurement and issues that have limited its use as an outcome measure in the past. Furthermore, we outline the steps that are being carried out now, and will be carried out in the future, to improve the performance of these studies in clinical trials. A systematic approach to optimizing and standardizing the measurement of MCC should greatly advance our ability to assess novel therapies at a relatively early stage of drug development. The resulting data may then be used to select those candidates that should be rapidly advanced into larger clinical trials.
title: Easy-to-use diagnostics of mean-term drought vulnerability
Creators: name:  Lischeid ,  Gunnar
Publisher: name: Deutsche Geologische Gesellschaft - Geologische Vereinigung e.V. (DGGV)
Year: 2021

description: Facing a couple of dry and warm years which are consistent with climate change scenarios, there is now increasing need for advanced diagnostic tools for drought risk assessment at the scale of years or decades. Commonly models are used for that purpose. However, they often suffer from a lack of data at sufficient spatial resolution, resulting in substantial uncertainties when applied beyond the bounds of single case studies. On the other hand, recent experience showed that simple extrapolating of trends of observed behaviour would not be adequate due to substantial changes of boundary conditions. A new method has been developed and tested at a regional scale (about 105 km2). It has been shown recently that most of the variance of groundwater head dynamics at that scale can be ascribed to differing degrees of damping of very similar input signals, that is, groundwater recharge dynamics, depending on the thickness and the texture of the overlying vadose zone. The degree of damping can easily be determined by a principal component analysis of a set of groundwater head time series. The stronger the damping the more pronounced is the memory. It could be shown that for wells with pronounced memory groundwater heads have been decreased for about 40 years in Northeast Germany. Thus the backbone of landscape hydrology has been exhibiting continuous weakening, resulting in increasing drought risk in the mid-term, although intermittent recovery at other sites seems to suggest the opposite.
Metal particles are inappropriate for testing a postulate of extrapulmonary transport [1]
Creators: name: Ghio, A.J.
name: Bennett, W.D.
Publisher: name: Public Health Services, US Dept of Health and Human Services
Year: 2007

description: Exposure to ambient air pollution particles has been associated with increased human morbidity and mortality, much of which is nonpulmonary. One proposed explanation of this extrapulmonary tissue injury is a transport of the particles outside of the respiratory tract. In the August 2006 issue of EHP, Elder et al. (2006) tested a postulate of extrapulmonary transport of particulate matter (PM). Specifically, the authors focused on the potential translocation of particles by olfactory neuronal pathways to the central nervous system. Comparable to previous studies on systemic transport of PM, they used a metal particle (i.e., a manganese oxide). Elder et al. measured tissue Mn concentrations in an effort to establish transport of the particle.
Ultrafine particle deposition and clearance in the healthy and obstructed lung
Creators: name: Bennett, W.D.
name: Zeman, K.L.
name: Brown, J.S.
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2002

description: Numerous epidemiologic studies have shown associations between exposure to particulate air pollution and acute increases in morbidity and mortality, particularly in persons with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The dosimetry of ultrafine particles in the human lung is poorly characterized. We studied the deposition and clearance of an ultrafine technetium-99m-labeled aerosol in 10 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and in 9 healthy subjects. Particle retention was followed for 2 hours after inhalation and again at 24 hours by γ scintigraphy. Central-to-peripheral ratios indexed airway deposition. Particle accumulation in the liver was examined by quantifying activity below the right lung. The dose rate for an aerosol exposure of 10 μg/m3 was calculated. Patients had a significantly greater dose rate than healthy subjects (2.9 ± 1.0 versus 1.9 ± 0.4 μg/h, p = 0.02). Central-to-peripheral ratios were slightly greater in patients than in healthy subjects (1.11 ± 0.10 versus 1.01 ± 0.11, p = 0.05). Clearance did not statistically differ between health and disease. On average, 24-hour retention was 85 ± 8% (corrected for isotope dissolution). No accumulation in the liver's vicinity was observed. Data suggest that relative to healthy subjects, patients with moderate-to-severe airways obstruction receive an increased dose from ultrafine particle exposure.
Dressed black holes in the new tensor-vector-scalar theory
Creators: name: Bernardo, Reginald Christian
name: Chen, Che-Yu
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
subject: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: As incarnations of gravity in its prime, black holes are arguably the best target for us to demystify gravity. Keeping in mind the prominent role black holes play in gravitational wave astronomy, it becomes a must for a theory to possess black hole solutions with only measurable departures from their general relativity counterparts. In this paper, we present black holes in a tensor-vector-scalar representation of relativistic modified Newtonian dynamics. We find that the theory allows Schwarzschild and nearly-Schwarzschild black holes as solutions, while the nontrivial scalar and vector fields generally diverge at the event horizon. Whether this is a physical pathology or not poses a challenge for these solutions, and by extension, the model. However, even if it is, this pathology could be overcome when the black hole hair vanishes.
description: 31 pages, 5 figures, v3: to appear in GRG
Effect of in-medium parameters of rho meson in its photoproduction reactions on nuclei
Creators: name: Das, Swapan
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
subject: Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: There exist model calculations showing the modification of the hadronic parameters of $ρ$ meson in the nuclear environment. From these parameters, we extract the $ρ$ meson nucleus optical potential and show the medium effect due to this potential on the $ρ$ meson mass distribution spectra in the photonuclear reaction. The calculated results reproduced reasonably the measured $e^+e^-$ invariant mass, i.e., $ρ$ meson mass, distribution spectra in the $( γ, ρ^0 \to e^+e^- )$ reaction on nuclei.
description: 14 pages, 5 figures
Projective Ranking-based GNN Evasion Attacks
Creators: name: Zhang, He
name: Yuan, Xingliang
name: Zhou, Chuan
name: Pan, Shirui
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
subject: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Graph neural networks (GNNs) offer promising learning methods for graph-related tasks. However, GNNs are at risk of adversarial attacks. Two primary limitations of the current evasion attack methods are highlighted: (1) The current GradArgmax ignores the "long-term" benefit of the perturbation. It is faced with zero-gradient and invalid benefit estimates in certain situations. (2) In the reinforcement learning-based attack methods, the learned attack strategies might not be transferable when the attack budget changes. To this end, we first formulate the perturbation space and propose an evaluation framework and the projective ranking method. We aim to learn a powerful attack strategy then adapt it as little as possible to generate adversarial samples under dynamic budget settings. In our method, based on mutual information, we rank and assess the attack benefits of each perturbation for an effective attack strategy. By projecting the strategy, our method dramatically minimizes the cost of learning a new attack strategy when the attack budget changes. In the comparative assessment with GradArgmax and RL-S2V, the results show our method owns high attack performance and effective transferability. The visualization of our method also reveals various attack patterns in the generation of adversarial samples.
description: Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
Induced sputum derives from the central airways: Confirmation using a radiolabeled aerosol bolus delivery technique
Creators: name: Hu, S.-C.
name: Alter, T.
name: Zeman, K.
name: Alexis, N.E.
name: Bennett, W.D.
Publisher: name: American Lung Association
Year: 2001

description: Indirect evidence suggests that induced sputum derives from the surfaces of the bronchial airways. To confirm this experimentally, we employed a radiolabeled aerosol bolus delivery technique that preferentially deposits aerosol in the central airways in humans. We hypothesized that there would be significantly more radioactivity recovered in an induced sputum sample, and greater airways clearance of radiolabeled particles, immediately after a central versus peripheral airways deposition. Ten healthy volunteers underwent radiolabeled aerosol deposition (99mTc sulfur colloid particles) to the central and peripheral airways on separate occasions followed immediately by induced sputum or no sputum (control), while seated in front of a gamma camera. Radioactivity was measured in the selected sputum sample, processed cell pellet, and supernatant fraction. Significantly more radioactivity was present in all portions of the sputum sample after central versus peripheral airways deposition (i.e., selected sample: 15,607 counts ± 2,985 versus 943 counts ± 298, p = 0.001). Clearance from the whole lung was significantly greater 40 min after central versus peripheral airways deposition (48 ± 3% versus 5 ± 1%, p = 0.0001). Compared with control, induced sputum greatly enhanced clearance after central deposition (48 ± 3% versus 11 ± 6%, p = 0.0001), but not after peripheral deposition (5 ± 1% versus 3 ± 0.8%). These results provide direct evidence that induced sputum derives from the central airways with little or no contribution from the peripheral airways.
Habemus Superstratum! A constructive proof of the existence of superstrata
Creators: name: Bena, Iosif
name: Giusto, Stefano
name: Russo, Rodolfo
name: Shigemori, Masaki
name: Warner, Nicholas P.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
subject: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We construct the first example of a superstratum: a class of smooth horizonless supergravity solutions that are parameterized by arbitrary continuous functions of (at least) two variables and have the same charges as the supersymmetric D1-D5-P black hole. We work in Type IIB string theory on T^4 or K3 and our solutions involve a subset of fields that can be described by a six-dimensional supergravity with two tensor multiplets. The solutions can thus be constructed using a linear structure, and we give an explicit recipe to start from a superposition of modes specified by an arbitrary function of two variables and impose regularity to obtain the full horizonless solutions in closed form. We also give the precise CFT description of these solutions and show that they are not dual to descendants of chiral primaries. They are thus much more general than all the known solutions whose CFT dual is precisely understood. Hence our construction represents a substantial step toward the ultimate goal of constructing the fully generic superstratum that can account for a finite fraction of the entropy of the three-charge black hole in the regime of parameters where the classical black hole solution exists.
description: 55 pages, 5 figures
(407) Agnes Allan Blair
Creators: name: Professions, Victorian
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: 220201 Business and Labour History
subject: FOS: Philosophy, ethics and religion
subject: History
subject: 140203 Economic History
subject: FOS: Economics and business

description: This three-year research project began in January 2014 and investigated whether, during the Victorian period, the professions formed a distinct self-sustaining social group with its own mores and values. The project looked at 16,000 individuals drawn from census data for Alnwick, Brighton, Bristol, Dundee, Greenock, Leeds, Merthyr Tydfil, Morpeth, and Winchester. The research project was funded by the UK Economic & Social Research Council and was based at the Universities of Oxford and Northumbria.
Effect of aerosolized uridine 5′-triphosphate on mucociliary clearance in mild chronic bronchitis
Creators: name: Bennett, W.D.
name: Zeman, K.L.
name: Shaffer, C.L.
name: Regnis, J.A.
name: Johnson, J.
name: Johnson, F.L.
name: Foy, C.
name: Sannuti, A.
Publisher: name: American Lung Association
Year: 2001

description: Previous studies show that uridine 5′-triphosphate (UTP), a P2Y2 receptor agonist, is effective at acutely enhancing mucociliary clearance in healthy, nonsmoking adults. UTP solution for inhalation is being developed by Inspire Pharmaceuticals under the compound number INS316. In a double-blind, randomized, crossover, placebo-controlled study we tested the single-dose effect of UTP in chronic smokers with mild chronic bronchitis (n = 15) by measuring the clearance of 99mTc-Fe2O3 particles (4.0 μm mass median aerodynamic diameter [MMAD]) after inhalation of nebulized placebo (0.9% saline) and two doses of UTP (20 and 100 mg in the nebulizer). On each study day, gamma camera scanning was performed over a 2-h period. After an initial deposition scan, subjects inhaled placebo or UTP during the first 20 min of scanning. Analysis of whole lung clearance showed that the retention-time curves for each day were biphasic and that the earliest break point in the average curves occurred at 50 min. Mean particle clearance rate (Clr in %/min) through 50 min for placebo treatment was Clr = 0.65 ± 0.27 whereas treatment with UTP showed Clr significantly increased to 0.95 ± 0.48 and 0.93 ± 0.44 for the 20-mg and 100-mg dose respectively, p <
description: 0.005 for both as compared with placebo. These data show that mucociliary clearance associated with mild chronic bronchitis is acutely improved with minimal doses of aerosolized UTP, presumably because of its stimulation of ciliary beating and hydration of airway secretions.
Qubit quantum-dot sensors: noise cancellation by coherent backaction, initial slips, and elliptical precession
Creators: name: Hell, M.
name: Wegewijs, M. R.
name: DiVincenzo, D. P.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We theoretically investigate the backaction of a sensor quantum dot with strong local Coulomb repulsion on the transient dynamics of a qubit that is probed capacitively. We show that the measurement backaction induced by the noise of electron cotunneling through the sensor is surprisingly mitigated by the recently identified coherent backaction [PRB 89, 195405] arising from quantum fluctuations. This renormalization effect is missing in semiclassical stochastic fluctuator models and typically also in Born-Markov approaches, which try to avoid the calculation of the nonstationary, nonequilibrium state of the qubit plus sensor. Technically, we integrate out the current-carrying electrodes to obtain kinetic equations for the joint, nonequilibrium detector-qubit dynamics. We show that the sensor-current response, level renormalization, cotunneling, and leading non-Markovian corrections always appear together and cannot be turned off individually in an experiment or ignored theoretically. We analyze the backaction on the reduced qubit state - capturing the full non-Markovian effects imposed by the sensor quantum dot on the qubit - by applying a Liouville-space decomposition into quasistationary and rapidly decaying modes. Importantly, the sensor cannot be eliminated completely even in the simplest high-temperature, weak-measurement limit: The qubit state experiences an initial slip that persists over many qubit cycles and depends on the initial preparation of qubit plus sensor quantum dot. A quantum-dot sensor can thus not be modeled as a 'black box' without accounting for its dynamical variables. We furthermore find that the Bloch vector relaxes (T1) along an axis that is not orthogonal to the plane in which the Bloch vector dephases (T2), blurring the notions of T1 and T2 times. Finally, the precessional motion of the Bloch vector is distorted into an ellipse in the tilted dephasing plane.
description: This is the version published in Phys. Rev. B