julilili42/papers huggingface dataset:
Determining Anaerobic Capacity Using Treadmill Ergometry
2005-09-01

The determination of anaerobic capacity (AC) using treadmill ergometry is problematic from a methodological, as well as a technical standpoint. In this study, a procedure from Monod and Scherrer was modified to examine whether realistic magnitudes of AC could be determined using three subject groups with different levels of anaerobic training. The subject groups consisted of 10 untrained (UT), 10 aerobic-trained runners (AeT), and 10 anaerobic-trained 400-meter sprinters (AnT). In two separate test series, first the VO2max was determined and second the so-called individual anaerobic threshold (IAT) was used to determine the aerobic power for all subjects. Then all subjects completed a series of sprints with increasing speeds above the VO2max, from which the work output from each test was calculated. Through linear regression, the point of intersection of the regression line with the y-axis was defined as global AC. The results show typically higher VO2max and IAT for AeT (62.2 ml x kg(-1) x min(-1), 14.7 km x h(-1)) compared to UT (53.2 ml x kg(-1) x min(-1); 11.2 km x h(-1)) and AnT (56.7 ml x kg(-1) x min(-1); 11.8 km x h(-1)). AC was significantly higher in AnT (4.1 +/- 0.58 kJ) compared to AeT (1.8 +/- 0.65 kJ) and UT (3.2 +/- 0.68 kJ). The determined absolute values of AC are considerably lower than of comparable examinations using bicycle ergometry. One reason for such an underestimation of AC could be that the horizontal work done during exercise on a treadmill was not taken into enough consideration. Another explanation is that the magnitude of the calculated AC values shows a dependency on the duration of each sprint test. In addition, the critical velocity for all subjects was found to be higher than for IAT, which consequently leads to an underestimation of AC. Moreover, the absolute level of the AC values appears to depend on the endurance of the comparison groups. It can then be concluded that the applied procedure allows for a differentiation amongst a variously trained collective, but does not allow a correct absolute determination of the AC.
Demographics and Respiratory Illness Prevalence of Sport Scuba Divers
2005-09-01

This study aimed to establish epidemiological data on diving habits and outcome of subjects with respiratory diseases who are considered at increased risk for diving injuries. We conducted a cross-sectional demographics and prevalence study by distribution of an anonymous questionnaire with an issue of a widespread sport diving magazine. The questionnaire was designed to obtain medical and diving history data with an emphasis on respiratory diseases and complaints. The investigational population comprised sport scuba divers of any age and gender from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Two hundred and twenty-six male and 96 female divers sent completed questionnaires. Of the respondents 8.7 % indicated that they currently have asthma. Two thirds of asthmatics complained about regular dyspnoea. However, only 42.4 % used drugs relieving or controlling their symptoms regularly and 27.3 % used them in a prophylactic manner before diving. Five percent and 4.7 % of all divers reported a history of respiratory disease other than asthma or dyspnoea respectively. The divers with respiratory illness or complaints had logged a total of 17,386 dives. There were no cases of serious diving injuries. Despite the well-known limitations of postal surveys assessing self reported data, this study indicates that there is a population of subjects diving uneventfully with respiratory diseases that are considered medical contraindications to diving. These subjects deserve particular guidance on related risks and disease management.
Detection of Regional Myocardial Perfusion Deficit Using Rest and Stress Perfusion MRI: A Feasibility Study
2005-09-01

In patients with single-vessel coronary artery disease, perfusion deficits can reliably be detected using a saturation recovery true FISP sequence. Semiquantitative perfusion parameters upslope and peak signal intensity yielded similar results.
Checklists — Suitable Tools for Usability Testing
2005-09-01

Ergonomics in the operating room (OR) is an unsolved problem for users and engineers. Deficiencies of the OR as a workplace cause potential hazards for the patient as well as for the OR staff. To detect those conditions a checklist for the OR was developed and as a first step evaluated in a German hospital. Medical technical devices were found to be lacking in usability due to such as unclear symbols, impracticability, hindrances and insufficient ease in handling. Also the positioning of devices in the OR shows ergonomic problems that in most cases necessitates an unavoidable awkward working posture for the employees that causes pain. The checklist can be used as a basic tool for the implementation of usability into the engineering process and design of new medical devices as well as for the usability testing of the final product.
Memory-Based Parsing
2005-09-01

Memory-Based Learning (MBL), one of the most influential machine learning paradigms, has been applied with great success to a variety of NLP tasks. This monograph describes the application of MBL to robust parsing. Robust parsing using MBL can provide added functionality for key NLP applications, such as Information Retrieval, Information Extraction, and Question Answering, by facilitating more complex syntactic analysis than is currently available. The text presupposes no prior knowledge of MBL. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the framework and goes on to describe and compare applications of MBL to parsing. Since parsing is not easily characterizable as a classification task, adaptations of standard MBL are necessary. These adaptations can either take the form of a cascade of local classifiers or of a holistic approach for selecting a complete tree. The text provides excellent course material on MBL. It is equally relevant for any researcher concerned with symbolic machine learning, Information Retrieval, Information Extraction, and Question Answering.
Garment Motion Capture Using Color‐Coded Patterns
2005-09-01

In this paper we present an image-based algorithm for surface reconstruction of \\nmoving garment from multiple calibrated video cameras. Using a color-coded \\ncloth texture, we reliably match circular features between different camera \\nviews. As surface model we use an a priori known triangle mesh. By identifying \\nthe mesh vertices with texture elements we obtain a consistent parameterization \\nof the surface over time without further processing. Missing data points \\nresulting from self-shadowing are plausibly interpolated by minimizing a \\nthin-plate functional. The deforming geometry can be used for different \\ngraphics applications, e.g. for realistic retexturing. We show results for real \\ngarments demonstrating the accuracy of the recovered flexible shape.
Effects of ketamine medication on early and sustained PTSD symptoms
2005-09-01

The NMDA receptor antagonist ketamine produces transient dissociative and psychotic states in healthy humans that resemble symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Thus, symptoms induced by severe stress or ketamine might both be related to altered glutamatergic neurotransmission. Since ketamine is used as an analgesic and sedative in emergency care, it might be one factor exacerbating PTSD in accident victims when given in the acute trauma phase. We performed two studies investigating the effect of a peritraumatic administered single or fractionated ketamine dose on PTSD symptoms assessed within 48h post-event (study 1) and approximately one year post-event (study 2) in moderately injured accident victims. In study 1 subjects (n=50) had received either racemic ketamine, opioids or no medication during emergency ambulance transportation. In study 2 patients (n=56) were treated with either (S)-ketamine, racemic ketamine or opioids. There were no differences between medication groups in regard to demographic variables, other traumatization, time between accident and investigation, injury severity and additional medication. Ketamine treated patients showed significantely increased PTSD symptoms in the early aftermath of the trauma (study 1) and (S)-ketamine but not racemic ketamine subjects exhibited strongly elevated symptoms even one year post-event (study 2). The data provide evidence for a modulating effect of ketamine on severity and duration of PTSD symptoms.
The Concept of Telomeric Non-Reciprocal Recombination (TENOR) Applied to Human Fibroblasts Grown in Serial Cultures: Concordance with Genealogical Data
2005-09-01

Since the discovery of the limited life span of human fibroblasts some 50 years ago, many genealogical studies have been undertaken to describe growth kinetics of fibroblasts in serial cultures by their individual division behavior. It is now accepted that proliferation capacities of human fibroblasts strongly depend on their telomere lengths and integrity. Telomeres shorten with each replication round, and there is a direct correlation between cell division capacity and telomere lengths; that is, the consumption of disposable telomeric DNA repeats during cell divisions progresses until critically short telomeres determining the replicative senescence of the cells are present. Recently, we have suggested that telomeres in fibroblasts can also become elongated during DNA replication by telomeric non-reciprocal recombination (TENOR). Here we discuss genealogical data collected over the last decades as well as more recent findings on the telomere-driven replicative senescence process, and we summarize both to give an integrated picture.
Neural plasticity mechanisms for learning of biological motion
2005-09-01

The recognition of complex movements and actions is a fundamental visual capability. In a series of psychophysical and functional imaging studies we have investigated the role of learning for the recognition of biological motion. Subjects were able to learn the discrimination between artificial novel biological motion stimuli. fMRI results indicate that several visual areas are involved in this learning process. More specifically, lower-level motion-related areas (hMT+/V5 and KO/V3B) show an emerging sensitivity for the differences between the discriminated stimuli, and higher-level areas (STS and FFA) show an increase of sensitivity after training. In addition, we find an overall reduction of the BOLD activity after training. Based on a hierarchical physiologically-inspired neural model for biological motion recognition (Giese & Poggio, 2003) we tried to reproduce the BOLD signal changes during discrimination learning. We show that learning of novel templates for complex movement patterns, which are encoded by sequences of body shapes and optic flow patterns, can be implemented by hebbian learning. We propose a model for the learning process that combines competitive and time-dependent hebbian plasticity, implementing physiologically plausible local learning rules. Our results demonstrate that these mechanisms can account for the emerging sensitivity for novel movement patterns observed in fMRI. We conclude that our model provides a well-defined framework to test different hypotheses about the mechanisms of neuronal plasticity underlying the learning of novel biological movements.
Simulation algorithms for integrals of a class of sampling distributions arising in population genetics
2005-09-01

Abstract Efficient stochastic algorithms are presented in order to simulate allele configurations distributed according to a family π A , 0<A<∞, of exchangeable sampling distributions arising in population genetics. Each distribution π A has two parameters n and k, the sample size and the number of alleles, respectively. For A→0, the distribution π A is induced from neutral sampling, whereas for A→∞, it is induced from Maxwell–Boltzmann sampling. Three different Monte Carlo methods (independent sampling procedures) are provided, based on conditioning, sequential methods and a generalization of Pitmans ‘Chinese restaurant process’. Moreover, an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo method is provided. The algorithms are applied to the homozygosity test and to the Ewens–Watterson–Slatkin test in order to test the hypothesis of selective neutrality. Keywords: Chinese restaurant processEwens sampling distributionIndependent samplingMarkov chain Monte CarloNeutrality testsNeutral population geneticsNumerical integration
Review Essay: No More Separation between Paid Work and Leisure? Methodological and Empirical Challenges in the Debate about Post-Fordism
2005-09-01

This anthology reflects the spheres of working and living in a neo-liberal society from the viewpoint of cultural studies in European ethnology. Concentrating on daily life, it questions prognoses about regimes of production, new types of manpower and the rediscovery of new structures of society and economy as well as new types of societies. The book is not only about micro-studies—concentrating on micro-studies has often been criticized by both the science of history and cultural studies, which work empirically. The authors of this book work on the basis of ambitious methodological approaches such as "multi-sited-ethnography," which transgresses static fieldwork and is able to grasp the differential between paid work and leisure. These case studies are fully convincing, but reflections about the end of a society in which everyone has a job or about the culture of the "new economy" remain too speculative. The review attempts to place the articles within discussions about changing regimes of production. These discussions began mostly in the field of regulation theory, then in industrial sociology and finally in the sociology of work. Especially innovative methods are considered, which allow the reader to simultaneously analyze the spheres of living and working. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs050324
The Position of the German Association of Biomedical Engineering on ‘Ergonomics in Medical Technologies’
2005-09-01

With an increasing employment of technology the medical quality of treatment may rise. But, at the same time, the complexity of the medical equipment rises as well. This leads to an increase of the required interactions between user and technology. Therefore, a higher work loading for the medical and nursing personal is consequential. New requirements to the safety and the quality of use of medical devices and systems result from the increasing employment of technology. For the acquisition of devices users and operators need to pay attention to the possible sources of error in handling and use as well as to the possibility to decrease operating and process costs by foresighted purchase decisions. The German Association of Biomedical Engineering (DGBMT) considered the ergonomics of medical products as an important topic and established the Technical Committee of Ergonomics in Medical Engineering. The members of this technical committee compiled a paper describing the most important issues and intentions being partly presented in the following.
Expression of allograft inflammatory factor‐1 and haeme oxygenase‐1 in brains of rats infected with the neurotropic Borna disease virus
2005-09-02

Experimental infection of Lewis rats with Borna disease virus (BDV) causes an immune‐mediated nonpurulent meningoencephalitis. Viral persistence in the central nervous system is accompanied by mononuclear infiltrates, activated monocytic/microglial cells and reactive astrocytes. The immune‐mediated process was further characterized by expression analysis of allograft inflammatory factor‐1 (AIF‐1), a novel marker of monocyte/microglial activation and of glial fibrillary acid protein (GFAP) between day 3 and day 50 post infection (p.i.). Potential neuroprotective effects of these cells were studied by the induction of haeme oxygenase‐1 (HO‐1), a defensive molecule against oxidative stress in various brain insults. In BDV‐infected rat brains, mononuclear infiltrates and AIF‐1 expression increased up to day 28 p.i. During early time points p.i., AIF‐1 expression was mainly found in inflammatory lesions and adjacent brain parenchyma. Already 24 days p.i., a widespread upregulation of AIF‐1 was observed which declined only moderately beyond day 28 p.i. HO‐1 induction was maximal between days 18 and 28 p.i. Increased amounts of GFAP‐positive astrocytes were present beyond 24 days p.i. Viral antigen expression increased simultaneously to the inflammatory reaction and persisted up to 50 days p.i. Widespread upregulation of AIF‐1 indicates an early, long‐lasting microglial activation, which might be involved in the immunesurveillance of the immune‐mediated inflammatory events. The early peak of HO‐1 most likely represents a neuroprotective, anti‐inflammatory response by invading monocytes, microglial cells and astrocytes during the formation of encephalitic lesions and acute viral replication.
Methylation is the initial reaction in anaerobic naphthalene degradation by a sulfate‐reducing enrichment culture
2005-09-06

Summary The sulfate‐reducing culture N47 can utilize naphthalene or 2‐methylnaphthalene as the sole carbon source and electron donor. Here we show that the initial reaction in the naphthalene degradation pathway is a methylation to 2‐methylnaphthalene which then undergoes the subsequent oxidation to the central metabolite 2‐naphthoic acid, ring reduction and cleavage. Specific metabolites occurring exclusively during anaerobic degradation of 2‐methylnaphthalene were detected during growth on naphthalene, i.e. naphthyl‐2‐methyl‐succinate and naphthyl‐2‐methylene‐succinate. Additionally, all three enzymes involved in anaerobic degradation of 2‐methylnaphthalene to 2‐naphthoic acid that could be measured in vitro so far, i.e. naphthyl‐2‐methyl‐succinate synthase, succinyl‐CoA:naphthyl‐2‐methyl‐succinate CoA‐transferase and naphthyl‐2‐methyl‐succinyl‐CoA dehydrogenase were also detected in naphthalene‐grown cells with similar activities. Induction experiments were performed to study the growth behaviour of the cell when transferred from naphthalene to 2‐methylnaphthalene or vice versa. When the cells were transferred from naphthalene to 2‐methylnaphthalene they grew immediately, indicating that no new enzymes had to be induced. On the contrary, the transfer of cells from 2‐methylnaphthalene to naphthalene caused a lag‐phase of almost 100 days demonstrating that an additional catabolic enzyme has to be activated in this case. We propose the methylation as a novel general mechanism of activation reactions in anaerobic degradation of unsubstituted aromatic hydrocarbons.
The Underestimated Virtues of the Two-sector AK Model
2005-09-07

Abstract This paper analyzes some unnoticed predictions of the two-sector AK model in line with the recent literature on embodied technical change. Firstly, by confining constant returns to capital to the investment sector, the AK model generates endogenously the secular downward trend of the relative price of equipment investment and the rising real investment rate observed in US NIPA data. Secondly, Jones' (1995) claim that the AK model fails to reconcile the empirical facts of trending real investment rates and stationary output growth vanishes in the two-sector version. Thirdly, consistent with the evidence from cross-country studies, the model predicts a negative relation between GDP per capita and the relative price of equipment. Hence, in spite of its overly simplistic structure, the two-sector AK model provides important intuition on the implications of a trending relative price of equipment investment in endogenous growth environments.
Reduction of Prussian Blue by the two iron‐reducing microorganisms Geobacter metallireducens and Shewanella alga
2005-09-07

Summary Cyanide or cyanide–metal complexes are frequent contaminants of soil or aquifers at industrial sites, which can be released from such sites by outgassing or transport with the groundwater. They form very stable complexes with iron, which may occur in the subsurface as an insoluble blue mineral, the so‐called Prussian Blue (Fe 4 [Fe(CN) 6 ] 3 ). In this study, we show that the insoluble and colloidal Fe(III)–cyanide complex Prussian Blue can be reduced and utilized as electron acceptor by the dissimilatory iron‐reducing bacteria Geobacter metallireducens and Shewanella alga strain BrY. The microbial reduction of the dark blue pigment Prussian Blue leads to the formation of a completely colourless solid mineral, presumably Prussian White (Fe 2 [Fe(CN) 6 ]), which could be reoxidized through exposure to air, regaining the dark blue colour. In addition, the microorganisms were able to grow with Prussian Blue, using it as the sole electron acceptor. Geobacter metallireducens could also reduce Prussian Blue coatings on sand, which was sampled from a contaminated site.
Open reading frames provide a rich pool of potential natural antisense transcripts in fungal genomes
2005-09-07

Natural antisense transcripts are reported from all kingdoms of life and several recent reports of genomewide screens indicate that they are widely distributed. These transcripts seem to be involved in various biological functions and may govern the expression of their respective sense partner. Very little, however, is known about the degree of evolutionary conservation of antisense transcripts. Furthermore, none of the earlier analyses has studied whether antisense relationships are solely dual or involved in more complex relationships. Here we present a systematic screen for cis- and trans-located antisense transcripts based on open reading frames (ORFs) from five fungal species. The relative number of ORFs involved in antisense relationships varies greatly between the five species. In addition, other significant differences are found between the species, such as the mean length of the antisense region. The majority of trans-located antisense transcripts is found to be involved in complex relationships, resulting in highly connected networks. The analysis of the degree of evolutionary conservation of antisense transcripts shows that most antisense transcripts have no ortholog in any other species. An annotation of antisense transcripts based on Gene Ontology directs to common terms and shows that proteins of genes involved in antisense relationships preferentially localize to the nucleus with common functions in the regulation or maintenance of nucleic acids.
Normalized perfusion MRI to identify common areas of dysfunction: patients with basal ganglia neglect
2005-09-08

Perfusion-weighted imaging (PWI) is used to identify brain regions that are receiving enough blood supply to remain structurally intact, but not enough to function normally. Previous observations suggest that spatial neglect due to subcortical stroke can be explained by dysfunction of cortical areas rather than through the neuronal loss in the subcortical structures itself. The present study aimed to identify the dysfunctional cortical regions induced by basal ganglia stroke in patients with spatial neglect. In a patient group with stroke lesions centring on the basal ganglia, we examined the common area(s) of structurally intact but dysfunctional cortical tissue by using spatial normalization of PWI maps as well as symmetric voxel-wise inter-hemispheric comparisons. These new techniques allow comparison of the structurally intact but abnormally perfused areas of different individuals in the same stereotaxic space, and at the same time avoid problems due to regional perfusion differences and to possible observer-dependent biases. We found that strokes centring on the right basal ganglia which provoke spatial neglect induce abnormal perfusion in a circumscribed area of intact cortex that typically involves those three regions that have previously been described to provoke spatial neglect when damaged directly by cortical infarction: the superior temporal gyrus, the inferior parietal lobule and the inferior frontal gyrus. The data suggest that spatial neglect following a right basal ganglia lesion typically is caused by the dysfunction of (part of) these specific cortical areas.