pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
Effect of maternal use of labetalol on the cerebral autoregulation in premature infants

Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) are normally treated to avoid maternal complications. In this study we aimed to investigate if there was an effect of maternal HDP treatment on the cerebral autoregulation of the neonates by analysing measurements of mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) and rScO2 by means of correlation, coherence, and transfer function analysis. We found that these infants presented higher values of transfer function gain, which indicates impaired cerebral autoregulation, with a decreasing trend towards normality. We hypothesised that this trend was due to a vasodilation effect of the maternal use of labetalol due to accumulation, which disappeared by the third day after birth. Therefore, we investigated the values of pulse pressure in order to find evidence for a vasodilatory effect. We found that lower values of pulse pressure were present in these infants when compared with a control population, which, together with increased transfer function gain values, suggests an effect of the drug on the cerebral autoregulation.status: publishe
Brain tissue oxygen saturation increases during the night in adolescents

How does the oxygen metabolism change during sleep? We aimed to measure the change in brain tissue oxygen saturation (StO2) before and after sleep with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) using an in-house developed sensor. According to the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis [1], synaptic downscaling during sleep would result in reduced energy consumption. Thus, this reduced energy demands should be reflected in the oxygen metabolism and StO2. Thirteen nights of 7 male subjects (age 11-16 years, one subject contributed only one night, all others two) were included in the analysis. We performed NIRS measurements throughout the entire night. The NIRS sensor was placed close to electrode position Fp1 (international 10/20 system), over the left frontal cortex. Absolute StO2 and total haemoglobin (tHb) were calculated from the NIRS measurements using a self-calibrating method [2]. StO2 and tHb during the awake period prior to sleep and after awakening were compared. The subjects were instructed to lie in bed in the same position before and after sleep. Values of the two nights were averaged for each subject. Furthermore, a linear regression line was fit through the all-night StO2 recordings. We found an increase in StO2 by 4.32 ± 1.76 % (mean ± SD, paired t-test p < 0.001, n = 7) in the morning compared to evening, while tHb did not change (1.02 ± 6.81 μM p = 0.704, n = 7). Since the tHb remained at a similar level after sleep, this increase in StO2 indicates that in the morning more oxygenated blood and less deoxygenated blood was present in the brain compared to the evening. The slope of the regression line was 0.37 ± 0.13 % h(-1) leading to a similar increase of StO2 in the course of sleep. This may be interpreted as a reduced oxygen consumption or energy metabolism after sleep
Human-Centric Chronographics:Making Historical Time Memorable

A series of experiments is described, evaluating user recall of visualisations of historical chronology. Such visualisations are widely created but have not hitherto been evaluated. Users were tested on their ability to learn a sequence of historical events presented in a virtual environment (VE) fly-through visualisation, compared with the learning of equivalent material in other formats that are sequential but lack the 3D spatial aspect. Memorability is a particularly important function of visualisation in education. The measures used during evaluation are enumerated and discussed. The majority of the experiments reported compared three conditions, one using a virtual environment visualisation with a significant spatial element, one using a serial on-screen presentation in PowerPoint, and one using serial presentation on paper. Some aspects were trialled with groups having contrasting prior experience of computers, in the UK and Ukraine. Evidence suggests that a more complex environment including animations and sounds or music, intended to engage users and reinforce memorability, were in fact distracting. Findings are reported in relation to the age of the participants, suggesting that children at 11–14 years benefit less from, or are even disadvantaged by, VE visualisations when compared with 7–9 year olds or undergraduates. Finally, results suggest that VE visualisations offering a ‘landscape’ of information are more memorable than those based on a linear model.\ud
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Keywords: timeline, chronographic
Towards Improving Information Systems Interoperability in Disaster Management

Climate change-triggered catastrophic events appear to be steadily increasing in intensity and frequency. Proper preparation, response and recovery are essential in order to survive and manage disasters. Unfortunately, for historical, geographical and cultural reasons, the organisations responsible for delivering emergency response services often under-perform, with the lack of proper interop-eration and collaboration of their information systems being a main culprit. This paper analyses the interoperability issues specific to disaster management from an information systems perspective and proposes improvements based on the ad-vances in interoperability research and using an enterprise architecture perspective so as to provide a whole-system and sustainable solution.Full Tex
Measuring Supermassive Black Hole Spins in Active Galactic Nuclei

Measuring the spins of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in active galactic
nuclei (AGN) can inform us about the relative role of gas accretion vs. mergers
in recent epochs of the life of the host galaxy and its AGN. Recent advances in
theory and observation have enabled spin measurements for a handful of SMBHs
thus far, but this science is still very much in its infancy. Herein, I discuss
how and why we seek to measure black hole spin in AGN, using recent results
from long X-ray observing campaigns on three radio-quiet AGN (MCG-6-30-15, NGC
3783 and Fairall 9) to illustrate this process and its caveats. I then present
our current knowledge of the distribution of SMBH spins in the local universe.
I also address prospects for improving the accuracy, precision and quantity of
these spin constraints in the next decade and beyond with instruments such as
NuSTAR, Astro-H and a future generation large-area X-ray telescope.Comment: 63 pages, 28 figures, 1 table. Published in 2013 as a SpringerBrief:
  http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-7771-6/page/
Bioethical and medico-legal implications of withdrawing artificial nutrition and hydration from adults in critical care

The withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration or other life-sustaining treatments is a clinical decision, made in ICUs or in other settings, involving patients suffering from serious and irreversible diseases or impaired consciousness. Such clinical decisions must be made in the best interests of the patient, and must respect the wishes previously expressed by patients, laid down in their wills, in advance directives or in information passed on by relatives or legally appointed health-care agents, and in observance of common bioethical and legal rules in individual nations. Intensivists who are expert in the management of lifesustaining treatments are also involved in deciding when to withdraw futile therapies and instigate end-of-life care procedures for dying patients, with the sole aim of providing comfort and ensuring that suffering is not prolonged unnecessaril
Lean thinking for healthcare services: how far does information quality affect the emergency services?

This aim of this paper is to reduce waste in emergency services. It defines waste as any event that causes delay, waiting, disruption or repeating operation, the research adapts lean thinking approach to suit the emergency services taking into consideration the quality of information flow. The paper discusses the differences between manufacturing and healthcare environment and considers the related dimensions of information quality. The paper employs observational methodology and presents results of observations conducted in emergency services of three Chinese hospitals. The study shows that up to 22% of the emergency time can be saved via reducing and eliminating of preventable waste, that is, through introducing information quality methodology within the healthcare system.
Impact analysis of smart assistive technologies for people with dementia

Aims: To trial the use of a range of available Smart Assistive Technologies for people with dementia and their families.

Methodology: Participants in the project were selected on the basis of having a diagnosis or suspected diagnosis of dementia; living at home and eligible for government funding for care in their own homes. All participants were assessed by an Occupational Therapist, and then based on this assessment of individual need and functional capacity, were prescribed individual items of AT.

Findings: The results found a range of benefits including a significant reduction in the extent to which carers were worried about the client getting out of bed at night and falling following the implementation of AT. No difference was found in the ability of carers to leave the client alone at home as a result of the AT, nor any indication that AT made the clients feel safer. AT did not reduce their need for external support services (respite), in-home care (housework and /or meals). Contrary to expectations results also found that neither the levels of stress nor the frequency of stress reported by carers decreased significantly secondary to the introduction of AT. Finally carers had perceived that using the AT would enable the client to remain home longer, however this was not supported by the post AT survey.

Summary: The disability support and aged care sectors have not to date taken full advantage of assistive and other relevant technologies; there is a massive unmet need for greater support and a significant level of issues that are not addressed. There are a range of potential benefits of Smart Assistive Technologies for people with dementia, their families and carers. This small study confirmed some of these whilst confirmation of other potential benefits will require more research.
Efficient and Deadlock-Free Tree-Based Multicast Routing Methods for Networks-on-Chip (NoC)

Publisher: Springer Science+Business Media, New York, 2014. Chapter 6 of the book:Routing Algorithms in Networks-on-Chip, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-8274-1_6,This chapter presents a new efficient and deadlock free tree-based multicast routing method and concept. The presented deadlock-free multicast routing algorithm can be implemented on a network-on-chip (NoC) router microarchitecture, realizing a mesh planar network topology. The NoC microarchitecture supports both deadlock-free static and efficient adaptive tree-based multicast routing. Multicast packets are routed and scheduled in the NoC by using a flexible multiplexing/interleaving technique with wormhole switching. The flexibility of the proposed multicast routing method is based on a locally managed packet identity (ID-tag) attached to every flit. This concept allows different packets to be interleaved at flit-level in a single buffer pool on the same link. Furthermore, a pheromone tracking strategy presented in this chapter, which is used to reduce communication energy in the adaptive tree-based multicast routing method. The strategy is used to perform efficient spanning trees for the adaptive tree-based multicast routing which are generated at runtime
Globally sparse PLS regression

Volume 56 ; Print ISBN : 978-1-4614-8282-6Partial least squares (PLS) regression combines dimensionality reduction and prediction using a latent variable model. It provides better predictive ability than principle component analysis by taking into account both the independent and re- sponse variables in the dimension reduction procedure. However, PLS suffers from over-fitting problems for few samples but many variables. We formulate a new criterion for sparse PLS by adding a structured sparsity constraint to the global SIMPLS optimization. The constraint is a sparsity-inducing norm, which is useful for selecting the important variables shared among all the components. The optimization is solved by an augmented Lagrangian method to obtain the PLS components and to perform variable selection simultaneously. We propose a novel greedy algorithm to overcome the computation difficulties. Experiments demonstrate that our approach to PLS regression attains better performance with fewer selected predictor
MULTI-ATLAS-BASED SEGMENTATION OF PELVIC STRUCTURES FROM CT SCANS FOR PLANNING IN PROSTATE CANCER RADIOTHERAPY

In prostate cancer radiotherapy, the accurate identification of the prostate and organs at risk in planning computer tomography (CT) images is an important part of the therapy planning and optimization. Manually contouring these organs can be a time consuming process and subject to intra- and inter-expert variability. Automatic identification of organ boundaries from these images is challenging due to the poor soft tissue contrast. Atlas-based approaches may provide a priori structural information by propagating manual expert delineations to a new individual space; however the inter-individual variability and registration errors may lead to biased results. Multi-atlas approaches can partly overcome some of these difficulties by selecting the most similar atlases among a large data base but the definition of similarity measure between the available atlases and the query individual has still to be addressed. The purpose of this chapter is to explain atlas-based segmentation approaches and the evaluation of different atlas-based strategies to simultaneously segment prostate, bladder and rectum from CT images. A comparison between single and multiple atlases is performed. Experiments on atlas ranking, selection strategies and fusion decision rules are carried out to illustrate the presented methodology. Propagation of labels using two registration strategies are applied and the results of the comparison with manual delineations are reported
Computational surgery and dual training: Computing, robotics and imaging

This critical volume focuses on the use of medical imaging, medical robotics, simulation, and information technology in surgery. It offers a road map for computational surgery success, discusses the computer-assisted management of disease and surgery, and provides a rational for image processing and diagnostic. This book also presents some advances on image-driven intervention and robotics, as well as evaluates models and simulations for a broad spectrum of cancers as well as cardiovascular, neurological, and bone diseases. Training and performance analysis in surgery assisted by robotic systems is also covered. This book also: Provides a comprehensive overview of the use of computational surgery and disease management Discusses the design and use of medical robotic tools for orthopedic surgery, endoscopic surgery, and prostate surgery Provides practical examples and case studies in the areas of image processing, virtual surgery, and simulation training Computational Surgery and Dual Training: Computing, Robotics and Imaging is an ideal book for graduate students and professionals in the area of bioengineering, computational science, computational medicine, and medical residents in surgery
A Mathematical Model for Growing Metastases on Oncologists’s Service

International audienceThe dual classification of cancer as localized or metastatic disease is one of the key point in the elaboration of the best therapy for each patient. Neverthe-less, many studies reveal that part of these localized diseases are already metastatic. The presence of undetectable or micro-metastases explains the necessity of adjuvant chemotherapies after resection of the primary tumor even for some T1N0M0 cancer. There is probably a continuum between these two stages. We expose here how a mathematical model of growing metastases could reflect this continuum of the disease and how such a model could help the oncologists in the choice of the treatment. This phenomenological model is based on a structured transport equations with non local boundary condition describing the evolution of the density of metastasis. Thanks to this model, we forge a new numerical index, that we call Metastatic Index, able to reveal either the micro-metastatic state of the patient, or the visible metastatic one. Numerical illustrations show how this new index can be used
A perspective on the impact of reproductive technologies on food production in Africa

Africa for the largest part is still regarded as part of the developing world and has a history of political
instability, natural disasters, floods and droughts that all had an effect on the development of livestock
production systems and the potential application of biotechnologies. It is expected that the human
population in sub Saharan Africa will experience a growth of 1.2 % per year over the next 30 years. There
is therefore pressure to increase sustainable productivity of livestock. Reproductive technologies such as
Artificial Insemination in Africa were driven primarily by the need to control or prevent venereal diseases
like Trichomoniases and Campylobacter fetus venerealis in cattle. Reproductive biotechnology had a
limited impact in Africa due to several factors including a lack of infrastructure and animal recording
systems, clear breeding objectives and continuously changing production systems and markets. Africa has
a large variety of genetic resources adapted to the diverse environment and production systems and
biotechnology should be applied within this context for an increase in food production.http://www.springer.comseries/55842015-06-30hb201
Multi-mode resource constrained project scheduling problem including multi-skill labor (MRCPSP-MS): model and a solution method

The problem that we address in this chapter is an extension of the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP). It belongs to the class of project scheduling problems with multi-level (or multi-mode) activities, that permit an activity to be processed by resources operating at appropriate modes, where each mode belongs to a different resource level and incurs different cost and duration. Each activity must be allocated exactly one unit of each required resource, and the resource unit may be used at any of its specified levels. The processing time of an activity is given by the maximum of the durations that would result from different resources allocated to that activity. The objective is to find an optimal solution that minimizes the overall project cost, given a delivery date. A penalty is incurred for tardiness beyond the specified delivery date, or a bonus is accrued for early completion. We present a mathematical programming formulation as an accurate problem definition. A Filtered Beam Search (FBS)-based method is used to solve the problem. It was implemented using the C# language. Results of our experimentations on the use of this method are also presented
Renormalization of circle diffeomorphism sequences and markov sequences

We show a one-to-one correspondence between circle diffeomorphism sequences that are C^{ 1+n}-periodic points of renormalization and smooth Markov sequences.We thank the financial support of LIAAD–INESC TEC through program PEst, USP-UP project, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, FEDER and COMPETE Programmes, PTDC/MAT/121107/2010 and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). J. P.Almeida acknowledges the FCT support given through Grant SFRH/PROTEC/49754/2009
Laser-assisted microdissection applied to floral tissues

Cellular context can be crucial when studying developmental processes as well as responses to environmental variation. Several different tools have been developed in recent years to isolate specific tissues or cell types. Laser-assisted microdissection (LAM) allows for the isolation of such specific tissue or single cell-types purely based on morphology and cytology. This has the advantage that (1) cell types that are rare can be isolated from heterogeneous tissue, (2) no marker line with cell type-specific expression needs to be established, and (3) the method can be applied to non-model species and species that are difficult to genetically transform. The rapid development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches has greatly advanced the possibilities to perform molecular analyses in diverse organisms. However, there is a mismatch between currently available cell isolation tools and their applicability to non-model organisms. Therefore, LAM will become increasingly popular in the study of diverse agriculturally or ecologically relevant plant species. Here, we describe a protocol that has been successfully used for LAM to isolate either whole floral organs or even single cell types in plants, e.g., Arabidopsis thaliana, Boechera spp., or tomato
Modeling Liquidity Risk With Implications for Traditional Market Risk Measurement and Management

Market risk management traditionally has focussed on the distribution of portfolio value changes resulting from moves in the midpoint of bid and ask prices. Hence the market risk is really in a “pure” form: risk in an idealized market with no “friction” in obtaining the fair price. However, many markets possess an additional liquidity component that arises from a trader not realizing the mid-price when liquidating her position, but rather the mid-price minus the bid-ask spread. We argue that liquidity risk associated with the uncertainty of the spread, particularly for thinly traded or emerging market securities under adverse market conditions, is an important part of overall risk and is therefore an important component to model.
We develop a simple liquidity risk methodology that can be easily and seamlessly integrated into standard value-at-risk models, and we show that ignoring the liquidity effect can produce underestimates of market risk in emerging markets by as much as 25-30%. Furthermore, we show that the BIS inadvertently is already monitoring liquidity risk, and that by not modeling it explicitly and therefore capitalizing against it, banks will be experiencing surprisingly many violations of capital requirements, particularly if their portfolios are concentrated in emerging markets
A numerical study on the evolution of portfolio rules

In this paper we test computationally the performance of CAPM in an evolutionary setting. In particular we study the stability of distribution of wealth in a financial market where some traders invest as prescribed by CAPM and others behave according to different portfolio rules. Our study is motivated by recent analytical results that show that, whenever a logarithmic utility maximiser enters the market, CAPM traders vanish in the long run. Our analysis provides further insights and extends these results. We simulate a sequence of trades in a financial market and: first, we address the issue of how long is the long run in different parametric settings; second, we study the effect of heterogeneous savings behaviour on asymptotic wealth shares. We find that CAPM is particularly “unfit” for highly risky environments
Internet traffic dynamics

The telecommunications industry has evolved at unprecedented rates with current estimates
suggesting that seven percent of the world’s population now has access to the Internet. However,
such growth has stimulated vigorous competition in national and international telecommunications
markets leading to a price-cost margin squeeze and unsustainable rates of network expansion. This
study demonstrates the reliability of established extrapolation methods for forecasting bandwidth
demand and provides network managers with the opportunity to observe Internet traffic dynamics.
The ability to anticipate periods of peak use and surplus capacity is likely to pay dividends in terms
of a more targeted approach to network expansion plans.