nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Successful treatment for graft versus host disease after pancreas transplantation
Venue: Clinical transplantation
Year: 2014

Graft versus host disease (GVHD) after pancreas transplantation is a rare but serious complication: All previously reported cases were fatal. We herein report three cases of GVHD after pancreas transplantation with favorable outcomes. Patients with a history of kidney (and pancreas) transplantation subsequently received a pancreas (and kidney) transplantation (i.e. pancreas retransplantation or pancreas after kidney transplantation) and developed acute GVHD. All of them responded to increased immunosuppression (e.g. steroid bolus, antithymocyte globulin) and retained normal graft function. Because the clinical manifestations are non specific, vigilance is necessary to make an accurate diagnosis. We underscored the importance of a biopsy of involved organs and the clinicopathologic correlation in the early diagnosis of GVHD. Augmented immunosuppression to prevent progression from a self limited disease to life threatening pancytopenia or sepsis may be most critical to improve outcome.
In the Pursuit of Sons: Additional Births or Sex Selective Abortion in Pakistan?
Venue: Population and development review
Year: 2016

Even though Pakistan is a highly patriarchal society, it has not featured prominently in studies focusing on sex selective abortion and sex ratios at birth. But with fertility declining and existing strong son preference Pakistan has one of the highest desired sex ratios in the world how will Pakistani families respond? In the pursuit of sons, will they have additional children or resort to sex selective abortions? Or is there evidence that the pursuit of sons is weakening? Using data from three rounds of the demographic and health survey, we show clear evidence of son preference in fertility intentions, patterns of contraceptive use and parity progression ratios. More specifically, we find pervasive evidence that Pakistanis continue childbearing to have a son, to have more than one son and to have at least one daughter. We do not find consistent and convincing evidence that sex ratios at birth (which indicate sex selective abortion) are increasing.
Biomarkers of severity and threshold of allergic reactions during oral peanut challenges
Venue: The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology
Year: 2020

Oral food challenge (OFC) is the criterion standard to assess peanut allergy (PA) but it involves a risk of allergic reactions of unpredictable severity.  Our aim was to identify biomarkers for risk of severe reactions or low dose threshold during OFC to peanut.  We assessed Learning Early about Peanut Allergy study, Persistance of Oral Tolerance to Peanut study, and Peanut Allergy Sensitization study participants by administering the basophil activation test (BAT) and the skin prick test (SPT) and measuring the levels of peanut specific IgE, Arachis hypogaea 2 specific IgE, and peanut specific IgG4, and we analyzed the utility of the different biomarkers in relation to PA status, severity, and threshold dose of allergic reactions to peanut during OFC.  When a previously defined optimal cutoff was used, the BAT diagnosed PA with 98% specificity and 75% sensitivity. The BAT identified severe reactions with 97% specificity and 100% sensitivity. The SPT, level of Arachis hypogaea 2 specific IgE, level of peanut specific IgE, and IgG4/IgE ratio also had 100% sensitivity but slightly lower specificity (92% 93% 90% and 88% respectively) to predict severity. Participants with lower thresholds of reactivity had higher basophil activation to peanut in vitro. The SPT and the BAT were the best individual predictors of threshold. Multivariate models were superior to individual biomarkers and were used to generate nomograms to calculate the probability of serious adverse events during OFC for individual patients.  The BAT diagnosed PA with high specificity and identified severe reactors and low threshold with high specificity and high sensitivity. The BAT was the best biomarker for severity, surpassed only by the SPT in predicting threshold. Nomograms can help estimate the likelihood of severe reactions and reactions to a low dose of allergen in individual patients with PA.
Critical Success Factors of Total Quality Management and their impact on Performance of Iranian Automotive Industry
Year: 2011

Th is paper shows a model to conduct an empirical study in Iranian automotive industry in order to improve their performance. There are many factors which are effective factors in improving performance of Iranian automobile industry namely, leadership, customer focus, training, supplier quality management, product design, process management, and team work. The quality improvement plays a fundamental role in determining the performance in Iranian manufacturing industries. In this research, a model has been developed that includes Quality culture, Critical success factors of Total Quality Management and quality improvement to study their influence on the performance of Iranian automotive industry. It is hoped that this paper can provide an academic source for both academicians and managers due to investigate the relationship between Quality culture, critical success factors of Total Quality Management, Quality improvement, and Performance in a systematic manner to increase successful rate of Total Quality Management implementation.
A qualitative investigation into the relationship between work life balance and organisational commitment: Evidence from American software companies in Ireland
Year: 2018

The study explores work life balance and organisational commitment of employees working in American software companies in Ireland. The researcher developed a conceptual framework examining external factors, individual factors, different types of benefits and mediators for utilising work life balance programmes. The researcher chose an exploratory phenomenological research approach for this study. Seven employees participated in semi structured interviews, from 4 different organisations. The researcher sought a balance of male and female participants, parents and individuals without children, managers and employees. The results indicate that work life balance and organisational commitment cannot be viewed in isolation. The main differences were found between working parents and individuals with no children with regards to their perceived experience of worklife balance and organisational commitment. In addition, the influence of technology and flexible working provided challenges and opportunities to workers. While workers were conscious of the negative effects of technology, specifically with regard to switching off after work, commitment levels were not affected by this. Further influence factors, such as organisational culture or quality of work contributed towards employee commitment. The developed framework proved useful throughout the research and together with the empirical findings contributed to the growing collection of literature on worklife balance and organisational commitment.
Flow State Feedback Through Sports Wearables: A Case Study on Tennis
Venue: Conference on Designing Interactive Systems
Year: 2018

Flow state is a psychological state of optimal performance. To experience flow state, one needs to receive unambiguous feedback. Previous studies have described activities with internalized feedback modalities (e.g. visual) However, they do not offer any appropriate feedback modality for the activities that may benefit from external feedback, such as opponent based sports. Addressing the issue, we adopted a research through design process and considered tennis as our case, in which players can benefit from attaining flow  This pictorial reveals our approach to design 6 wearable device concepts under 3 design themes as future directions for design practitioners and researchers.
Complex Dynamics in the Basal Ganglia: Health and Disease Beyond the Motor System.
Venue: The Journal of neuropsychiatry and clinical neurosciences
Year: 2018

The rate and oscillatory hypotheses are the two main current frameworks of basal ganglia pathophysiology. Both hypotheses have emerged from research on movement disorders sharing similar conceptualizations. These pathological conditions are classified either as hypokinetic or hyperkinetic, and the electrophysiological hallmarks of basal ganglia dysfunction are categorized as prokinetic or antikinetic. Although nonmotor symptoms, including neurobehavioral symptoms, are a key manifestation of basal ganglia dysfunction, they are uncommonly accounted for in these models. In patients with Parkinson's disease, the broad spectrum of motor symptoms and neurobehavioral symptoms challenges the concept that basal ganglia disorders can be classified into two categories. The profile of symptoms of basal ganglia dysfunction is best characterized by a breakdown of information processing, accompanied at an electrophysiological level by complex alterations of spiking activity from basal ganglia neurons. The authors argue that the dynamics of the basal ganglia circuit cannot be fully characterized by linear properties such as the firing rate or oscillatory activity. In fact, the neuronal spiking stream of the basal ganglia circuit is irregular but has temporal structure. In this context, entropy was introduced as a measure of probabilistic irregularity in the temporal organization of neuronal activity of the basal ganglia, giving place to the entropy hypothesis of basal ganglia pathology. Obtaining a quantitative characterization of irregularity of spike trains from basal ganglia neurons is key to elaborating a new framework of basal ganglia pathophysiology.
Postsynaptic potentiation of corticospinal projecting neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex after nerve injury
Venue: Molecular pain
Year: 2014

Long term potentiation (LTP) is the key cellular mechanism for physiological learning and pathological chronic pain. In the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) postsynaptic recruitment or modification of AMPA receptor (AMPAR) GluA1 contribute to the expression of LTP. Here we report that pyramidal cells in the deep layers of the ACC send direct descending projecting terminals to the dorsal horn of the spinal cord (lamina I III) After peripheral nerve injury, these projection cells are activated, and postsynaptic excitatory responses of these descending projecting neurons were significantly enhanced. Newly recruited AMPARs contribute to the potentiated synaptic transmission of cingulate neurons. PKA dependent phosphorylation of GluA1 is important, since enhanced synaptic transmission was abolished in GluA1 phosphorylation site serine 845 mutant mice. Our findings provide strong evidence that peripheral nerve injury induce long term enhancement of cortical spinal projecting cells in the ACC. Direct top down projection system provides rapid and profound modulation of spinal sensory transmission, including painful information. Inhibiting cortical top down descending facilitation may serve as a novel target for treating neuropathic pain.
Biogeographical Patterns of Light Use efficiency?
Year: 2021

<p>The emergent spatial organization of ecosystems in elevational gradients suggest that some ecosystem processes, important enough to shape morphological traits, must show similar patterns./p><p>The most important of these processes, gross primary production (GPP) usually (albeit with some exceptions) decreases with elevation. This was previously thought to be a direct consequence either of the decrease in temperature, or the decrease of incident light due to cloud cover. However, some recent developments in photosynthetic theory, plus the unprecedented availability of ecophysiological data, support the hypothesis that plants acclimate (optimize) their photosynthetic traits to the environment. In this new theoretical context, the temperature is no longer considered as a major constraining factor, except when either freezing or excessively high temperatures inhibit plant function generally./p><p>Two of the most important photosynthetic traits, the maximum rate of carboxylation (V<sub>CMAX</sub> and the intrinsic quantum efficiency #966;<sub>o</sub> vary in opposite directions with increasing elevation. Plants tend to increase V<sub>CMAX</sub> to compensate for a decrease in the ratio leaf internal to ambient partial pressures of CO<sub>2</sub> while #966;<sub>o</sub> increases with temperature up to a plateau. To explore how these different responses, documented at leaf level, converge in emergent spatial patterns at ecosystem scale we considered how elevation shape light use efficiency (defined as the ratio of CO<sub>2</sub> assimilated over light absorbed) over mountain regions worldwide. We used data from eddy covariance flux towers, from different networks, located in mountain regions around the world, adding up to 618 station years of record. To complement our analysis, we included theoretical predictions using an optimality model (P model) and evaluated changes in the spatial pattern with simulation experiments./p><p>Empirically we found an asymptotic response of LUE to the average daytime temperature during the growing season with increasing elevation, and a small, but globally consistent effect of elevation on LUE. We propose a theoretical explanation for the observation that temperature differences have little impact on the biogeographical pattern of LUE, but we also find that different assumptions on the acclimation of the maximum rate of electron transport (J<sub>MAX</sub> and #966;<sub>o</sub> change this pattern./p>
The Esg Innovation Disconnect: Evidence from Green Patenting
Year: 2020

No firm or sector of the global economy is untouched by innovation. In equilibrium, innovators will flock to (and innovation will occur where) the returns to innovative capital are the highest. In this paper, we document a strong empirical pattern in green patent production. Specifically, we find that oil, gas, and energy producing firms firms with lower Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores, and who are often explicitly excluded from ESG funds' investment universe are key innovators in the United States' green patent landscape. These energy producers produce more, and significantly higher quality, green innovation. Our findings raise important questions as to whether the current exclusions of many ESG focused policies along with the increasing incidence of explicit divestiture campaigns are optimal, or whether reward based incentives would lead to more efficient innovative outcomes.
Diff/TS: A Tool for Fine Grained Structural Change Analysis
Venue: 2008 15th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering
Year: 2008

This paper reports on a tool for fine grained analysis of structural changes made between revisions of programs. The tool, called Diff/TS, calculates, visualizes and classifies edit operations including "moves' that will change one revision into another by means of detailed tree structural analysis on source code. Such analysis tends to be time consuming and inflexible. We have extended a general tree comparison algorithm with heuristics driven control configurable for multiple programming languages and have achieved both processing speed and analysis precision needed for investigating large scale software projects. The tool is capable of processing Python, Java, C and C+ projects. We present several applications including software "archaeology' on a widely known open source software project and automated "phylogenetic' malware classification based on control flows. These examples suggest that tree differencing is useful for measuring distance or dissimilarity between tree structured artifacts, and offer good precision tests of the method.
Epidemiological and etiological study of oral submucous fibrosis among gutkha chewers of Patna, Bihar, India.
Venue: Journal of the Indian Society of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry
Year: 2006

An etiological and epidemiological study of oral submucous fibrosis (OSMF) has been done in Patna, Bihar. Total 157 cases of OSMF and 135 control subjects were selected for study in the period of 2002 2004. It was observed that Male:Female ratio was 2.7:1. The youngest case of OSMF was 11 year old and the oldest one was 54 years of age. Maximum number of cases were belonging to 21 40 years of age and they were belonging to low or middle socioeconomic class. Most of the OSMF cases used heavy spices and chillies, where as control mild spices and chillies. Gutkha was the most commonly used by the OSMF cases only 3 per cent did not use any gutkha or other areca nut product where as 80 per cent control did not have any chewing habit. The OSMF cases used gutkha and other products 2 10 pouches per day and kept in the mouth for 2 10 minutes and they were using since 2 4 years. Most of the OSMF cases kept gutkha in the buccal vestibule or they chewed and swallowed it, only a small number of patients chewed and spitted it out. It was also observed that OSMF developed on one side of the buccal vestibule where they kept the chew and other side was normal.
Automatic Generation of Dispatching Rules for Large Job Shops by Means of Genetic Algorithms
Venue: CIMA@ICTAI
Year: 2018

Generating optimized large scale production plans is an important open problem where even small improvements result in significant savings. Application scenarios in the semiconductor industry comprise thousands of machines and hundred thousands of job operations and are therefore among the most challenging scheduling problems regarding their size. In this paper we present a novel approach for automatically creating composite dispatching rules, i.e. heuristics for job sequencing, for makespan optimization in such large scale job shops. The approach builds on the combination of event based simulation and genetic algorithms. We introduce a new set of benchmark instances with proven optima that comprise up to 100000 operations to be scheduled on up to 1000 machines. With respect to this large scale benchmark, we present the results of an experiment comparing well known dispatching rules with automatically created composite dispatching rules produced by our system. It is shown that the proposed system is able to come up with highly effective dispatching rules such that makespan reductions of up to 38% can be achieved, and in fact, often near optimal or even optimal schedules can be produced.
Wireless sensor networks for temperature and humidity monitoring within concrete structures
Year: 2013

This paper presents the development of an automatic wireless sensor monitoring system for civil engineering structures. The objective is to provide a solution to measure both temperature and humidity inside a concrete structure. The research has been focused in the early age and curing phase period. Four solutions have been addressed. The first one involves the use of a negative temperature coefficient (NTC) thermistor and an IRIS mote allowing for the creation of an IEEE 802.15.4 network. However, the results have shown that the sensor measurements present a 5 degC standard deviation between the actual and the experimental values. The second one considers the use of the SHT15 (humidity/temperature) sensor, together with the PIC18F4680 microcontroller or the Arduino platform. The third solution involves the use of the SHT21S (humidity/temperature) sensor and the eZ430 RF2500 wireless development tool platform for the MSP430 microcontroller. In this case, the temperature readings were successfully performed for the first 16 h, while the humidity values were successfully obtained for the first 24 h of the experiment. Although the set of measured values is very promising for the SHT15 and SHT21S sensors, both sensors have stopped working after some time, showing that direct contact between the sensor and the concrete alkaline environment causes its breakdown. Finally, the fourth solution considers both the SHT15 and SHT21S sensors completely shielded allowing for the creation of a long term solution. As, the SHT15 and SHT12S sensors have not been affected by the alkaline environment for more than two months of operation, enabling real time and continuous monitoring with almost non intrusive tiny devices, the potential of applying the proposed inexpensive wireless sensor network approach is verified.
Network effects govern the evolution of maritime trade
Venue: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Year: 2020

Over 70% of the total value of international trade is carried by sea, accounting for 80% of all cargo volumes. Maritime trade flows impact both the economic development of the concerned regions and their ecosystems. Shipping routes are constantly evolving and likely to be affected by the consequences of climate change, while, at the same time, ships are a considerable source of pollution. This work performs a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of maritime trade flows on a global scale over a long period, taking into account aspects of evolution, reactions to shocks, and discovering predictive models. We use machine learning methods to uncover the single dominant dynamics that govern the evolution of the structure and the intensity of maritime trade. Maritime transport accounts for over 80% of the world trade volume and is the backbone of the global economy. Global supply chains create a complex network of trade flows. The structure of this network impacts not only the socioeconomic development of the concerned regions but also their ecosystems. The movements of ships are a considerable source of CO2 emissions and contribute to climate change. In the wake of the announced development of Arctic shipping, the need to understand the behavior of the maritime trade network and to predict future trade flows becomes pressing. We use a unique database of daily movements of the world fleet over the period 1977 2008 and apply machine learning techniques on network data to develop models for predicting the opening of new shipping lines and for forecasting trade volume on links. We find that the evolution of this system is governed by a simple rule from network science, relying on the number of common neighbors between pairs of ports. This finding is consistent over all three decades of temporal data. We further confirm it with a natural experiment, involving traffic redirection from the port of Kobe after the 1995 earthquake. Our forecasting method enables researchers and industry to easily model effects of potential future scenarios at the level of ports, regions, and the world. Our results also indicate that maritime trade flows follow a form of random walk on the underlying network structure of sea connections, highlighting its pivotal role in the development of maritime trade.
XTIMPORTU: Stata module to import monthly, quarterly, half yearly or yearly time series and panel data as panelvar timevar valuevar from a supported file format to memory or a file
Year: 2020

xtimportu imports long or wide (pivoted) monthly, quarterly half yearly or yearly time series and panel data from a supported file type using standard Stata import syntax, filtering cross sectional units with regular expressions (case sensitive! and encoding the matches (each match to a string, spaces are replaced with underscores "_" (if required) and returns long data as panelvar timevar valuevar to memory and/or to a file using standard Stata export and/or save syntax. Imported data are assumed to be wide if timevar is omitted.