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A repressor complex governs the integration of flowering signals in Arabidopsis. | Multiple genetic pathways act in response to developmental cues and environmental signals to promote the floral transition, by regulating several floral pathway integrators. These include FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) and SUPPRESSOR OF OVEREXPRESSION OF CONSTANS 1 (SOC1). We show that the flowering repressor SHORT VEGETATIVE PHASE (SVP) is controlled by the autonomous, thermosensory, and gibberellin pathways, and directly represses SOC1 transcription in the shoot apex and leaf. Moreover, FT expression in the leaf is also modulated by SVP. SVP protein associates with the promoter regions of SOC1 and FT, where another potent repressor FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) binds. SVP consistently interacts with FLC in vivo during vegetative growth and their function is mutually dependent. Our findings suggest that SVP is another central regulator of the flowering regulatory network, and that the interaction between SVP and FLC mediated by various flowering genetic pathways governs the integration of flowering signals. |
Research Guides: European Social and Cultural History during the Long Nineteenth Century: Start Here | Welcome to the library web site for European Social and Cultural History during the Long Nineteenth Century! |
Veiling glare in high dynamic range imaging | The ability of a camera to record a high dynamic range image, whether by taking one snapshot or a sequence, is limited by the presence of veiling glare - the tendency of bright objects in the scene to reduce the contrast everywhere within the field of view. Veiling glare is a global illumination effect that arises from multiple scattering of light inside the camera's body and lens optics. By measuring separately the direct and indirect components of the intra-camera light transport, one can increase the maximum dynamic range a particular camera is capable of recording. In this paper, we quantify the presence of veiling glare and related optical artifacts for several types of digital cameras, and we describe two methods for removing them: deconvolution by a measured glare spread function, and a novel direct-indirect separation of the lens transport using a structured occlusion mask. In the second method, we selectively block the light that contributes to veiling glare, thereby attaining significantly higher signal-to-noise ratios than with deconvolution. Finally, we demonstrate our separation method for several combinations of cameras and realistic scenes. |
An overview of workflow management: From process modeling to workflow automation infrastructure | Today's business enterprises must deal with global competition, reduce the cost of doing business, and rapidly develop new services and products. To address these requirements enterprises must constantly reconsider and optimize the way they do business and change their information systems and applications to support evolving business processes. Workflow technology facilitates these by providing methodologies and software to support (i) business process modeling to capture business processes as workflow specifications, (ii) business process reengineering to optimize specified processes, and (iii) workflow automation to generate workflow implementations from workflow specifications. This paper provides a high-level overview of the current workflow management methodologies and software products. In addition, we discuss the infrastructure technologies that can address the limitations of current commercial workflow technology and extend the scope and mission of workflow management systems to support increased workflow automation in complex real-world environments involving heterogeneous, autonomous, and distributed information systems. In particular, we discuss how distributed object management and customized transaction management can support further advances in the commercial state of the art in this area. |
Multi-level Adaptive Active Learning for Scene Classification | Semantic scene classification is a challenging problem in computer vision. In this paper, we present a novel multi-level active learning approach to reduce the human annotation effort for training robust scene classification models. Different from most existing active learning methods that can only query labels for selected instances at the target categorization level, i.e., the scene class level, our approach establishes a semantic framework that predicts scene labels based on a latent objectbased semantic representation of images, and is capable to query labels at two different levels, the target scene class level (abstractive high level) and the latent object class level (semantic middle level). Specifically, we develop an adaptive active learning strategy to perform multi-level label query, which maintains the default label query at the target scene class level, but switches to the latent object class level whenever an “unexpected” target class label is returned by the labeler. We conduct experiments on two standard scene classification datasets to investigate the efficacy of the proposed approach. Our empirical results show the proposed adaptive multi-level active learning approach can outperform both baseline active learning methods and a state-of-the-art multi-level active learning method. |
Contrast-Enhanced Black and White Images | This paper investigates contrast enhancement as an approach to tone reduction, aiming to convert a photograph to black and white. Using a filter-based approach to strengthen contrast, we avoid making a hard decision about how to assign tones to segmented regions. Our method is inspired by sticks filtering, used to enhance medical images but not previously used in non-photorealistic rendering. We amplify contrast of pixels along the direction of greatest local difference from the mean, strengthening even weak features if they are most prominent. A final thresholding step converts the contrast-enhanced image to black and white. Local smoothing and contrast enhancement balances abstraction and structure preservation; the main advantage of our method is its faithful depiction of image detail. Our method can create a set of effects: line drawing, hatching, and black and white, all having superior details to previous black and white methods. |
Distributed Event Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks for Disaster Management | Recently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have become mature enough to go beyond being simple fine-grained continuous monitoring platforms and become one of the enabling technologies for disaster early-warning systems. Event detection functionality of WSNs can be of great help and importance for (near) real-time detection of, for example, meteorological natural hazards and wild and residential fires. From the data-mining perspective, many real world events exhibit specific patterns, which can be detected by applying machine learning (ML) techniques. In this paper, we introduce ML techniques for distributed event detection in WSNs and evaluate their performance and applicability for early detection of disasters, specifically residential fires. To this end, we present a distributed event detection approach incorporating a novel reputation-based voting and the decision tree and evaluate its performance in terms of detection accuracy and time complexity. |
Fast and Accurate Calibration of a Kinect Sensor | The article describes a new algorithm for calibrating a Kinect sensor that achieves high accuracy using only 6 to 10 image-disparity pairs of a planar checkerboard pattern. The method estimates the projection parameters for both color and depth cameras, the relative pose between them, and the function that converts kinect disparity units (kdu) into metric depth. We build on the recent work of Herrera et. al [8] that uses a large number of input frames and multiple iterative minimization steps for obtaining very accurate calibration results. We propose several modifications to this estimation pipeline that dramatically improve stability, usability, and runtime. The modifications consist in: (i) initializing the relative pose using a new minimal, optimal solution for registering 3D planes across different reference frames, (ii) including a metric constraint during the iterative refinement to avoid a drift in the disparity to depth conversion, and (iii) estimating the parameters of the depth distortion model in an open-loop post-processing step. Comparative experiments show that our pipeline can achieve a calibration accuracy similar to [8] while using less than 1/6 of the input frames and running in 1/30 of the time. |
A Survey on Survey of Migration of Legacy Systems | Legacy systems are mission critical complex systems which are hard to maintain owing to shortage of skill sets and monolithic code architecture with tightly coupled tiers, all of which are indication of obsoleteness of the system technology. Thus, they have to be migrated to the latest technology(ies). Migration is an offspring research in Software Engineering which is almost three decades old research and numerous publications have emerged in many topics in the migration domain with focus areas of code migration, architecture migration, case study on migration and effort estimation on migration. In addition, various survey works surveying different aspects of migration have also emerged. This paper provides a survey of these survey works in order to provide a consolidation of these survey works. As an outcome of the survey on survey of migration, a road map of migration evolution from the early stages to the recent works on migration comprising of significant milestones in migration research has been presented in this work. |
Overview of Impacts of Climate Change and Adaptation in China's Agriculture | The purpose of this paper is to document the likely impacts of climate change on China’s agriculture and the current adaptation efforts made y government and farmers The revie of literature sho s that climate change ill have a signi cant impact on agriculture, primarily through its effect on crop yields. The extent of predicted impacts highly depends on the crop, the CO2 fertilization effect assumption and adaptation abilities. Market response to the production shocks resulting from climate change will lessen the impacts on agricultural production predicted by natural scientists. On adaptation, the government’s major efforts have been in the developing new technologies, reforming extension system and enhancing institutional capacity. Farmers do adapt to climate change, but their adaptation measures cannot fully offset the negative impacts of climate change. The paper concludes and makes implications for future studies. |
Reflexology and progressive muscle relaxation training for people with multiple sclerosis: a crossover trial. | PURPOSE
To compare the effects of reflexology and progressive muscle relaxation training for people with multiple sclerosis, provided by nurse therapists, on psychological and physical outcomes.
METHODS
A crossover design was chosen with a 4-week break between treatment phases. The Short Form 36 and General Health Questionnaire 28 were completed by patients (n=50) pre and post each of the 6-week treatment phases. Salivary cortisol levels, State Anxiety Inventory, systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate data were collected pre and post the weekly sessions.
RESULTS
All of the chosen measures except for three SF-36 scales recorded significant changes, however, despite the 4-week break (washout period), most outcome measures did not return to their pre-treatment baseline levels. This meant that the analysis of the data was complicated by significant effects involving ordering of treatment occurring for eight of the variables (one from SF-36, two from the GHQ, SAI, Salivary Cortisol, Systolic BP and HR). However, there was a difference in the State Anxiety Inventory values between the treatments of the order of 1.092 units (95%CI 0.211-1.976) (p=0.016, Wilks lambda=0.885, df=1, 48) in favour of reflexology. Changes in salivary cortisol comparing levels pre 1st to post 6th session favoured reflexology (95%CI 0.098-2.644) (p=0.037, Wilks lambda=0.912, df=1, 48). A significant difference was found in the way the treatments affected change in systolic blood pressure following sessions; this favoured progressive muscle relaxation training (p=0.002, Wilks lambda=0.812, df=1, 48).
CONCLUSION
Positive effects of both treatments following sessions and over the 6 weeks of treatment are reported, with limited evidence of difference between the two treatments, complicated by ordering effects. |
Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: is beauty in the perceiver's processing experience? | We propose that aesthetic pleasure is a function of the perceiver's processing dynamics: The more fluently perceivers can process an object, the more positive their aesthetic response. We review variables known to influence aesthetic judgments, such as figural goodness, figure-ground contrast, stimulus repetition, symmetry, and prototypicality, and trace their effects to changes in processing fluency. Other variables that influence processing fluency, like visual or semantic priming, similarly increase judgments of aesthetic pleasure. Our proposal provides an integrative framework for the study of aesthetic pleasure and sheds light on the interplay between early preferences versus cultural influences on taste, preferences for both prototypical and abstracted forms, and the relation between beauty and truth. In contrast to theories that trace aesthetic pleasure to objective stimulus features per se, we propose that beauty is grounded in the processing experiences of the perceiver, which are in part a function of stimulus properties. |
Materials for Masses: SVBRDF Acquisition with a Single Mobile Phone Image | We propose a material acquisition approach to recover the spatially-varying BRDF and normal map of a near-planar surface from a single image captured by a handheld mobile phone camera. Our method images the surface under arbitrary environment lighting with the flash turned on, thereby avoiding shadows while simultaneously capturing highfrequency specular highlights. We train a CNN to regress an SVBRDF and surface normals from this image. Our network is trained using a large-scale SVBRDF dataset and designed to incorporate physical insights for material estimation, including an in-network rendering layer to model appearance and a material classifier to provide additional supervision during training. We refine the results from the network using a dense CRF module whose terms are designed specifically for our task. The framework is trained end-to-end and produces high quality results for a variety of materials. We provide extensive ablation studies to evaluate our network on both synthetic and real data, while demonstrating significant improvements in comparisons with prior works. |
SleepTight: low-burden, self-monitoring technology for capturing and reflecting on sleep behaviors | Manual tracking of health behaviors affords many benefits, including increased awareness and engagement. However, the capture burden makes long-term manual tracking challenging. In this study on sleep tracking, we examine ways to reduce the capture burden of manual tracking while leveraging its benefits. We report on the design and evaluation of SleepTight, a low-burden, self-monitoring tool that leverages the Android's widgets both to reduce the capture burden and to improve access to information. Through a four-week deployment study (N = 22), we found that participants who used SleepTight with the widgets enabled had a higher sleep diary compliance rate (92%) than participants who used SleepTight without the widgets (73%). In addition, the widgets improved information access and encouraged self-reflection. We discuss how to leverage widgets to help people collect more data and improve access to information, and more broadly, how to design successful manual self-monitoring tools that support self-reflection. |
Fast High-Quality Volume Ray Casting with Virtual Samplings | Volume ray-casting with a higher order reconstruction filter and/or a higher sampling rate has been adopted in direct volume rendering frameworks to provide a smooth reconstruction of the volume scalar and/or to reduce artifacts when the combined frequency of the volume and transfer function is high. While it enables high-quality volume rendering, it cannot support interactive rendering due to its high computational cost. In this paper, we propose a fast high-quality volume ray-casting algorithm which effectively increases the sampling rate. While a ray traverses the volume, intensity values are uniformly reconstructed using a high-order convolution filter. Additional samplings, referred to as virtual samplings, are carried out within a ray segment from a cubic spline curve interpolating those uniformly reconstructed intensities. These virtual samplings are performed by evaluating the polynomial function of the cubic spline curve via simple arithmetic operations. The min max blocks are refined accordingly for accurate empty space skipping in the proposed method. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm, also exploiting fast cubic texture filtering supported by programmable GPUs, offers renderings as good as a conventional ray-casting algorithm using high-order reconstruction filtering at the same sampling rate, while delivering 2.5x to 3.3x rendering speed-up. |
Incident and long-term opioid therapy among patients with psychiatric conditions and medications: a national study of commercial health care claims. | There is growing evidence that opioid prescribing in the United States follows a pattern in which patients who are at the highest risk of adverse outcomes from opioids are more likely to receive long-term opioid therapy. These patients include, in particular, those with substance use disorders (SUDs) and other psychiatric conditions. This study examined health insurance claims among 10,311,961 patients who filled prescriptions for opioids. Specifically, we evaluated how opioid receipt differed among patients with and without a wide range of preexisting psychiatric and behavioral conditions (ie, opioid and nonopioid SUDs, suicide attempts or other self-injury, motor vehicle crashes, and depressive, anxiety, and sleep disorders) and psychoactive medications (ie, antidepressants, benzodiazepines, hypnotics, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and medications used for SUD, tobacco cessation, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). Relative to those without, patients with all assessed psychiatric conditions and medications had modestly greater odds of subsequently filling prescriptions for opioids and, in particular, substantially greater risk of long-term opioid receipt. Increases in risk for long-term opioid receipt in adjusted Cox regressions ranged from approximately 1.5-fold for prior attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder medication prescriptions (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.53; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.48-1.58) to approximately 3-fold for prior nonopioid SUD diagnoses (HR = 3.15; 95% CI, 3.06-3.24) and nearly 9-fold for prior opioid use disorder diagnoses (HR = 8.70; 95% CI, 8.20-9.24). In sum, we found evidence of greater opioid receipt among commercially insured patients with a breadth of psychiatric conditions. Future studies assessing behavioral outcomes associated with opioid prescribing should consider preexisting psychiatric conditions. |
Modeling Lithium Ion battery degradation in electric vehicles | A new aging model for Lithium Ion batteries is proposed based on theoretical models of crack propagation. This provides an exponential dependence of aging on stress such as depth of discharge. A measure of stress is derived from arbitrary charge and discharge histories to include mixed use in vehicles or vehicle to grid operations. This aging model is combined with an empirical equivalent circuit model, to provide time and state of charge dependent charge and discharge characteristics at any rate and temperature. This choice of model results in a cycle life prediction with few parameters to be fitted to a particular cell. |
Voice activity detection in noisy environments | The subject of this paper is robust voice activity detection (VAD) in noisy environments, especially in car environments. We present a comparison between several frame based VAD feature extraction algorithms in combination with different classifiers. Experiments are carried out under equal test conditions using clean speech, clean speech with added car noise and speech recorded in car environments. The lowest error rate is achieved applying features based on a likelihood ratio test which assumes normal distribution of speech and noise and a perceptron classifier. We propose modifications of this algorithm which reduce the frame error rate by approximately 30% relative in our experiments compared to the original algorithm. |
Rate-distortion methods for image and video compression | Rate-Distortion Methods for Image and Video Compression: An. Or Laplacian p.d.f.s and optimal bit allocation techniques to ensure that bits.Rate-Distortion Methods for Image and Video Compression. Coding Parameters: chosen on input-by-input rampant caries pdf basis to optimize. In this article we provide an overview of rate-distortion R-D based optimization techniques and their practical application to image and video. Rate-distortion methods for image and video compression. Enter the password to open this PDF file.Bernd Girod: EE368b Image and Video Compression. Lower the bit-rate R by allowing some acceptable distortion. Consideration of a specific coding method. Bit-rate at least R.rate-distortion R-D based optimization techniques and their practical application to. Area of R-D optimized image and video coding see 1, 2 and many of the. Such Intra coding alone is in common use as ramones guitar tab pdf a video coding method today. MPEG-2: A step higher in bit rate, picture quality, and popularity.coding, rate distortion RD optimization, soft decision quantization SDQ. RD methods for video compression can be classified into two categories. Practical SDQ include without limitation SDQ in JPEG image coding and H. However, since we know that most lossy compression techniques operate on data. In image and video compression, the human perception models are less well. The conditional PDF QY Xy x that minimize rate for a given distortion D.The H. 264AVC video coding standard has been recently proposed by the Joint. MB which determine the overall rate and the distortion of the coded. Figure 2: The picture encoding process in the proposed method. Selection of λ and.fact, operational rate-distortion methods have come into wide use for image and video coders. In previous work, de Queiroz applied this technique to finding. |
Usefulness of one-stage coronary artery bypass grafting on the beating heart and abdominal aortic aneurysm repair. | Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is commonly associated with coronary artery disease (CAD). Simultaneous coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) under cardiac arrest and AAA repair may be considerably invasive. Recently CABG under the beating heart without CPB has been reported as a less invasive method. We report the combined operation of CABG on a beating heart and AAA repair for AAA patients with CAD, and compare it with a separate operation. A retrospective review of the records of consecutive patients who underwent elective combined procedure or single operation for CABG on a beating heart and/or repair of the AAA between May 1999 and October 2001 was carried out. Ten patients underwent combined procedures. A single operation, CABG on a beating heart or repair of AAA, were performed in 27 or 19 patients. There were no significant differences with regard to intraoperative blood loss, transfusion and postoperative intubation time among the three groups. There was no operative mortality for any of the three groups. All cases were discharged without severe complications and with patent coronary bypass grafts. There was a decrease in mean total hospital costs for the combined operation group compared with the CABG group plus AAA repair group (3.34 million versus 5.87 million yen). Combined CABG on a beating heart and AAA repair on a one-step approach appears to be a safe and useful therapeutic strategy for AAA patients with CAD. |
Survey on Taxonomy Learning from Text Corpora : Issues , Resources and Recent Advances | A taxonomy is a semantic hierarchy, consisting of concepts linked by is-a relations. While a large number of taxonomies have been constructed from human-compiled resources (e.g., Wikipedia), learning taxonomies from text corpora has received a growing interest and is essential for longtailed and domain-specific knowledge acquisition. In this paper, we overview recent advances on taxonomy construction from free texts, reorganizing relevant subtasks into a complete framework. We also overview resources for evaluation and discuss challenges for future research. |
Machine learning based QoE prediction in SDN networks | Our work in this paper presents a prediction of quality of experience based on full reference parametric (SSIM, VQM) and application metrics (resolution, bit rate, frame rate) in SDN networks. First, we used DCR (Degradation Category Rating) as subjective method to build the training model and validation, this method is based on not only the quality of received video but also the original video but all subjective methods are too expensive, don't take place in real time and takes much time for example our method takes three hours to determine the average MOS (Mean Opinion Score). That's why we proposed novel method based on machine learning algorithms to obtain the quality of experience in an objective manner. Previous researches in this field help us to use four algorithms: Decision Tree (DT), Neural Network, K nearest neighbors KNN and Random Forest RF thanks to their efficiency. We have used two metrics recommended by VQEG group to assess the best algorithm: Pearson correlation coefficient r and Root-Mean-Square-Error RMSE. The last part of the paper describes environment based on: Weka to analyze ML algorithms, MSU tool to calculate SSIM and VQM and Mininet for the SDN simulation. |
Evaluation of Spoken Language Systems: the ATIS Domain | Progress can be measured and encouraged via standards for comparison and evaluation. Though qualitative assessments can be useful in initial stages, quantifiable measures of systems under the same conditions are essential for comparing results and assessing claims. This paper will address the emerging standards for evaluation of spoken language systems. Introduct ion and Background Numbers are meaningless unless it is clear where they come from. The evaluation of any technology is greatly enhanced in usefulness if accompanied by documented standards for assessment. There has been a growing appreciation in the speech recognition community of the importance of standards for reporting performance. The availability of standard databases and protocols for evaluation has been an important component in progress in the field and in the sharing of new ideas. Progress toward evaluating spoken language systems, like the technology itself, is beginning to emerge. This paper presents some background on the problem and outlines the issues and initial experiments in evaluating spoken language systems in the "common" task domain, known as ATIS (Air Travel Information Service). The speech recognition community has reached agreement on some standards for evaluating speech recognition systems, and is beginning to evolve a mechanism for revising these standards as the needs of the community change (e.g., as new systems require new kinds of data, as new system capabilities emerge, or as refinements in existing methods develop). A protocol for testing speakerdependent and speaker-independent speech recognition systems on read speech with a 1000-word vocabulary, (e.g., [6]), coordinated through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has been operating for several years. This mechanism has inspired a healthy environment of competitive cooperation, and has led to documented major performance improvements and has increased the sharing of methodologies and of data. Evaluation of natural language (NL) understanding is more difficult than recognition because (1) the phenomena of interest occur less frequently (a given corpus contains more phones and words than syntactic or semantic phenomena), (2) semantics is far more domain dependent than phonetics or phonology, hence changing domains is more labor intensive, and (3) there is less agreement on what constitutes the "correct" analysis. However, MUCK, Message Understanding Conference, is planning the third in a series of message understanding evaluations for later this year (August 1990). The objective is to carry out evaluations of text interpretation systems. The previous evaluation, carried out in March-June 1989, yielded quantitative measures of performance for eight natural language processing systems [4, 5]. The systems are evaluated on performance on a template-filling task and scored on measures of completeness and precision [7]. So far, we have discussed the evaluation of automatic speech recognition (i.e., the algorithmic translation from human speech to machine readable text), and of some aspects of natural language understanding (i.e., the automatic computation of a meaning and the generation, if needed, of an appropriate response). The evaluation of Spoken language systems represents a big step beyond t h e previous evaluation mechanisms described. The input is spontaneous, rather than read, speech. The speech is recorded in an office environment, rather than in a sound-isolated booth. The subjects are involved in problem-solving scenarios. The systems to be tested will be evaluated on the answers returned from a common database. The rest of this paper focuses on the steps taken by the DARPA speech and natural language community to develop a common evaluation database and scoring software and protocols. The first use of this mechanism took place June 1990. However, given the greatly increased challenge, the first use of the mechanism is more a test of the mechanism than of the systems evaluated. It has become clear in carrying out the evaluation mechanism that the needs of common evaluation are sometimes at odds with the needs of well-designed systems. In particular, the common evaluation ignores dialogue beyond a single query-response pair, and all interactive aspects of systems. A proposal for dialogue evaluation is included in [3], this volume. Though the initial evaluation mechanism, described below, represents a major effort, and an enormous ad- |
Participants' experiences of intensifying insulin therapy during the Treating to Target in Type 2 Diabetes (4-T) trial: qualitative interview study. | AIM
To explore participants' experiences of intensifying insulin therapy during the Treating to Target in Type 2 Diabetes (4-T) trial.
METHODS
In-depth interviews were conducted with 41 trial participants who had had their insulin therapy intensified during this trial. Data were analysed using an inductive, thematic approach.
RESULTS
The vast majority of participants were receptive towards intensifying treatment. Whilst some were happy simply to follow health professionals' recommendations, others saw taking two types of insulin as a more effective way of controlling their diabetes. Post-intensification, participants sought to remember to take their additional injections by developing injection-related strategies and daily routines. The need to inject insulin whilst in public often arose more frequently following intensification and was a consistent source of anxiety. Those who were worried about injecting in public sought to avoid having to do so; for example, by injecting in toilets or by advancing or delaying the timing of their injections.
CONCLUSIONS
IT was not increasing the number of daily injections per se which was problematic for the participants who had agreed to have their insulin therapies intensified, but the increased likelihood of having to inject insulin in public. Addressing concerns about injecting in public places may help promote adherence to intensified insulin regimens. |
Clothing Retrieval Based on Local Similarity with Multiple Images | Recently, the online shopping market has been expanded, which has advanced studies of clothing retrieval via image search. For this study, we develop a novel clothing retrieval system considering local similarity, where users can retrieve their desired clothes which are globally similar to an image and partially similar to another image. We propose a method of coding global features by merging local descriptors extracted from multiple images. Furthermore, we design a system that re-evaluates output of similar image search by the similarity of local regions. We demonstrated that our method increased the probability of users finding their desired clothes from 39.7%-55.1%, compared to a standard similar image search system with global features of a single image. Statistical significance is proven using t-tests. |
Intrapleural etoposide for malignant effusion | The pharmacology, toxicity, and therapeutic effectiveness of etoposide (VP-16) given by the intrapleural route were examined in a phase I trial. Ten patients with malignant pleural effusion received 100, 150, or 225 mg/m2 VP-16 infused over 2 h into the pleural space after drainage of pleural fluid. The administration of VP-16 was tolerated well, with no local pain, increase in cough, dyspnea, or infection. Myelosuppression was mild at doses of 150 mg/m2 or less but severe at 225 mg/m2. Drug levels were followed in both plasma and pleural fluid for up to 12 h. Clearance of VP-16 from the pleural cavity was low at 2 ml/min m2. Peak pleural-fluid drug levels in patients receiving 225 mg/m2 exceeded 300 µg/ml, whereas peak drug concentrations in corresponding plasma samples obtained at the same time amounted to <10 µg/ml. Serial chest X-rays showed no disappearance of pleural effusion in nine evaluable patients. However, follow-up investigation of pleural fluid characteristics [carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), lactic dehydrogenase (LDH), and cytologic examination] suggested some evidence of local therapeutic benefit. |
Simulation & design of maximum current point tracking controller for 2 MHz RF H− source | This paper presents a Maximum Current Point Tracking (MCPT) Controller for SIC MOSFET based high power solid state 2 MHz RF inverter for RF driven H- ion source. This RF Inverter is based on a class-D, half-bridge with series resonance LC topology, operating slightly above the resonance frequency (near to 2 MHz). Since plasma systems have a dynamic behavior which affects the RF antenna impedance, hence the RF antenna voltage and current changes, according to change in plasma parameters. In order to continuously yield maximum current through an antenna, it has to operate at its maximum current point, despite the inevitable changes in the antenna impedance due to changes in plasma properties. An MCPT controller simulated using LT-spice, wherein the antenna current sensed, tracked to maximum point current in a close loop by varying frequency of the voltage controlled oscillator. Thus, impedance matching network redundancy is established for maximum RF power coupling to the antenna. |
Technology ’ s Effect on Hotels and Restaurants : Building a Strategic Competitive Advantage | The changing face of technology has played an integral role in the development of the hotel and restaurant industry. The manuscript investigated the impact that technology has had on the hotel and restaurant industry. A detailed review of the literature regarding the growth of technology in the industry was linked to the development of strategic direction. The manuscript also looked at the strategic analysis methodology for evaluating and taking advantage of current and future technological innovations for the hospitality industry. Identification and implementation of these technologies can help in building a sustainable competitive advantage for hotels and restaurants. |
Business Intelligence and Analytics: Research Directions | Business intelligence and analytics (BIA) is about the development of technologies, systems, practices, and applications to analyze critical business data so as to gain new insights about business and markets. The new insights can be used for improving products and services, achieving better operational efficiency, and fostering customer relationships. In this article, we will categorize BIA research activities into three broad research directions: (a) big data analytics, (b) text analytics, and (c) network analytics. The article aims to review the state-of-the-art techniques and models and to summarize their use in BIA applications. For each research direction, we will also determine a few important questions to be addressed in future research. |
Expanding the solar spectrum used by photosynthesis. | A limiting factor for photosynthetic organisms is their light-harvesting efficiency, that is the efficiency of their conversion of light energy to chemical energy. Small modifications or variations of chlorophylls allow photosynthetic organisms to harvest sunlight at different wavelengths. Oxygenic photosynthetic organisms usually utilize only the visible portion of the solar spectrum. The cyanobacterium Acaryochloris marina carries out oxygenic photosynthesis but contains mostly chlorophyll d and only traces of chlorophyll a. Chlorophyll d provides a potential selective advantage because it enables Acaryochloris to use infrared light (700-750 nm) that is not absorbed by chlorophyll a. Recently, an even more red-shifted chlorophyll termed chlorophyll f has been reported. Here, we discuss using modified chlorophylls to extend the spectral region of light that drives photosynthetic organisms. |
Serum C-Reactive Protein as Independent PrognosticVariable in Patients with Ovarian Cancer | Purpose: To evaluate serum C-reactive protein (CRP) as prognostic variable in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Experimental Design: In a multicenter study, preoperative serum CRP was evaluated in 623 patients with EOC. Results were correlated with clinical data. Results:Mean (SD) preoperative serum CRPwas 3.6 (4.8) mg/dL. Serum CRPwas significantly associated with International Federation of Gynecologists and Obstetricians stage (P < 0.001) and postoperative residual tumor mass (P < 0.001) but not with histologic grade (P = 0.1) and type (P = 0.7), patients’age (Pearson’s correlation coefficient = 0.05; P = 0.2), and serumCA125 (Pearson’s correlation coefficient = 0.02; P = 0.6). Patients with platinum-resistant EOC had significantly higher CRP serum levels compared with patients with platinum-sensitive EOC [6.0 (6.6) mg/dL versus 2.8 (3.8) mg/dL; P < 0.001]. Higher International Federation ofGynecologists and Obstetricians stage (P < 0.001), presence of postoperative residual tumor mass (P < 0.001), tumor grade (P = 0.001), serum CA 125 (P = 0.03), and serum CRP (P = 0.001) were independently associated with overall survival. Patients with serum CRP V1mg/dL versus >1mg/dL had an overall 5-year survival of 82% versus 58.5% (P < 0.001). Conclusion: Serum CRP can be seen as a novel, widely available independent prognostic variable of ovarian cancer. C-reactive protein (CRP) is one of the most important acutephase proteins produced predominantly by hepatocytes rising rapidly in response to inflammation (1, 2). CRP has both proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory actions, and it is uncertain which is predominant. Proinflammatory effects include the induction of monocytes. Anti-inflammatory actions are reflected by the diminished accumulation of neutrophils at inflammatory sites due to reduced neutrophil adhesion to the endothelium and the noninflammatory clearance of apoptotic cells (1, 2). Circulating serum CRP is routinely measured in clinical laboratories as marker for various acute and chronic inflammatory diseases (3–5). The pathogenesis and development of ovarian cancer have also been closely linked to inflammatory processes (6, 7). The inflammatory response promotes carcinogenesis by damaging DNA, stimulating angiogenesis and cell proliferation, and inhibiting apoptosis (8, 9). Various proinflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin-1, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-a, IFN-g, and tumor growth factor, all known to stimulate CRP production, influence survival, growth, mutation, proliferation, differentiation, and migration of tumor cells (6, 7, 10, 11). Serum CRP has been shown to parallel carcinogenesis possibly as an expression of the host defense reaction or as paraneoplastic syndrome (1, 3). Therefore, serum CRP has been investigated as risk factor and prognostic variable in various human malignancies, such as colon (12), esophageal (13), hepatocellular (14), and renal cell (15) cancer. Few data are available on the role of serum CRP in gynecologic malignancies. Preliminary data suggest a possible prognostic value in patients with ovarian cancer (16). Tumor stage and postoperative residual tumor mass at primary cytoreductive surgery have been shown to most reliably predict outcome in patients with ovarian cancer (17). Clinical decision making with respect to adjuvant therapy is largely based on International Federation of Gynecologists and Obstetricians (FIGO) stage and tumor grade, especially in earlystage disease. The standard concept of six cycles of a platinum/ taxane combination as adjuvant chemotherapy for ovarian Imaging, Diagnosis, Prognosis Authors’ Affiliations: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical University ofVienna; Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Gynecology and Gynecologic Oncology ; Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Wilhelminenspital, Vienna, Austria; Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Innsbruck Medical University, Innsbruck, Austria; Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Charite¤ / CampusVirchow-Klinikum, University Medicine of Berlin, Berlin, Germany; and Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Landeskrankenhaus Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria Received 5/1/07; revised 9/4/07; accepted10/24/07. Grant support: Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Gynecology and Gynecologic Oncology,Vienna, Austria. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges.This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with18 U.S.C. Section1734 solely to indicate this fact. Requests for reprints: Lukas A. Hefler, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical University of Vienna, Waehringer Gu« rtel 18-20, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. Phone: 43-1-40400-2962; Fax: 43-1-40400-2911; E-mail: [email protected]. F2008 American Association for Cancer Research. doi:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-07-1044 www.aacrjournals.org Clin Cancer Res 2008;14(3) February1, 2008 710 Research. on July 16, 2017. © 2008 American Association for Cancer clincancerres.aacrjournals.org Downloaded from cancer has recently been challenged (18, 19). Omission of chemotherapy for adequately staged early-stage disease (20), a neoadjuvant chemotherapy approach for patients expected not to be optimally debulked at primary cytoreductive surgery (21), and consolidation chemotherapy for patients at high risk for recurrent disease have been advocated (22). Additional prognostic variables to more individually tailor adjuvant therapy would be of considerable clinical value. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the clinical value of serum CRP as independent prognostic variable in a large multicenter study of patients with ovarian cancer. Materials andMethods Patients. A total of 623 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer were included in the present retrospective multicenter study (Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria: n = 208; Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Innsbruck Medical University, Innsbruck, Austria: n = 192; Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Charité/Campus Virchow-Klinikum, University Medicine of Berlin, Berlin, Germany: n = 99; Landeskrankenhaus Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria: n = 64; Wilhelminenspital, Vienna, Austria: n = 29; Sozialmedizinisches Zentrum Süd, KFJ, Vienna, Austria: n = 31). The respective Institutional Review Boards approved the present study. Data were collected with chart review. Before elective surgery, an acute infection was ruled out by a physical examination, measuring body temperature, and respective blood tests. Patients were treated according to standards of the respective institution with hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, pelvic and/or paraaortic lymphadenectomy, appendectomy, and omentectomy. All patients with tumor stages Ic to III and all patients with clear cell carcinoma received a platinum-based chemotherapy. All patients were followed up in 3-month intervals, including vagino-rectal palpation, abdominal ultrasound examination, and serum tumor marker evaluation. In cases of clinically doubtful findings and/or tumor marker elevation, computed tomography was done. The mean duration of follow-up was 25.5 (24.1) months. Patient charts were reviewed to obtain clinical data about age, FIGO tumor stage, tumor grade, amount of postoperative residual tumor mass after primary surgery, histologic type, preoperative serum CA 125, and time of death or time of last follow-up. Mean patient’s age at diagnosis, distribution of tumor stage, amount of postoperative residual tumor mass, and tumor grade were not different between study centers. Patients with platinum-resistant and platinum-sensitive tumors were defined as having a time with no evidence of disease V6 months versus >6 months after completion of primary chemotherapy. CRP measurement. Patients’ blood was obtained before surgery by peripheral venous puncture. CRP serum levels were measured as part of the clinical routine by a modified latex-enhanced immunoturbidimetric assay using a CRP Latex kit (Olympus Life and Material Science Europe) according to the manufacturer’s instructions (23). Serum levels V1 mg/dL were defined as normal. The manufacturer claims an intraassay variability between 1.64% and 3.34%. Serum CRP levels were not assessed expressly as part of the study but were ascertained as part of clinical routine. Of note, serum CRP levels were not assayed at one central laboratory to better reflect clinical practice, but all clinical laboratories used the same assay kit. Table 1. Patients’ characteristics and CRP serum levels in patients with ovarian cancer broken down by clinicopathologic variables Variable n or mean (SD) Mean (SD) CRP serum levels (mg/dL) P Patients with epithelial ovarian cancer 623 — — Age at first diagnosis (y) 60.5 (13.7) — — Tumor stage FIGO I 143 1.9 (3.0) <0.0001* FIGO II 44 2.1 (2.6) FIGO III 346 4.3 (5.3) FIGO IV 90 4.7 (5.6) Postoperative residual tumor mass after surgery (cm) V2 459 2.9 (4.5) <0.0001c >2 164 5.7 (5.3) Tumor grade G1 89 2.7 (5.2) 0.1* G2 218 3.4 (4.7) G3 316 3.9 (4.7) Histologic type Serous 401 3.6 (4.7) 0.7c Mucinous 68 Endometrioid 89 Others 65 Mucinous, endometrioid, and all others combined 222 3.5 (5.0) Length of follow-up (mo) 25.5 (24.1) — — Status at last observation Alive with no evidence of disease 342 — — Alive with stable disease 66 — — Progressive disease 64 — — Dead as a result of disease 131 — — Dead as a result of other causes 15 — — Lost to follow-up 5 — — *One-way ANOVA. ct test. SerumCRPand Prognosis in Ovarian Cancer www.aacrjournals.org Clin Cancer Res 2008;14(3) February1, 2008 711 Research. on July 16, 2017. © 2008 American Association for Cancer clincancerres.aacrjournals.org Downloaded from Statistics. Values are given as means (SD). Variables were compared using Pearson’s correlation coefficient, t test, and one-way ANOVA. Survival probabilities were calculated by univariate Kaplan-Meier a |
Similarity of Semantic Relations | There are at least two kinds of similarity. Relational similarity is correspondence between relations, in contrast with attributional similarity, which is correspondence between attributes. When two words have a high degree of attributional similarity, we call them synonyms. When two pairs of words have a high degree of relational similarity, we say that their relations are analogous. For example, the word pair mason:stone is analogous to the pair carpenter:wood. This article introduces Latent Relational Analysis (LRA), a method for measuring relational similarity. LRA has potential applications in many areas, including information extraction, word sense disambiguation, and information retrieval. Recently the Vector Space Model (VSM) of information retrieval has been adapted to measuring relational similarity, achieving a score of 47% on a collection of 374 college-level multiple-choice word analogy questions. In the VSM approach, the relation between a pair of words is characterized by a vector of frequencies of predefined patterns in a large corpus. LRA extends the VSM approach in three ways: (1) The patterns are derived automatically from the corpus, (2) the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) is used to smooth the frequency data, and (3) automatically generated synonyms are used to explore variations of the word pairs. LRA achieves 56% on the 374 analogy questions, statistically equivalent to the average human score of 57%. On the related problem of classifying semantic relations, LRA achieves similar gains over the VSM. |
Assessing the translational feasibility of pharmacological drug memory reconsolidation blockade with memantine in quitting smokers | Preclinical reconsolidation research offers the first realistic opportunity to pharmacologically weaken the maladaptive memory structures that support relapse in drug addicts. N-methyl D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonism is a highly effective means of blocking drug memory reconsolidation. However, no research using this approach exists in human addicts. The objective of this study was to assess the potential and clinical outcomes of blocking the reconsolidation of cue-smoking memories with memantine in quitting smokers. Fifty-nine dependent and motivated to quit smokers were randomised to one of three groups receiving the following: (1) memantine with or (2) without reactivation of associative cue-smoking memories or (3) reactivation with placebo on their target quit day in a double-blind manner. Participants aimed to abstain from smoking for as long as possible. Levels of smoking and FTND score were assessed prior to intervention and up to a year later. Primary outcome was latency to relapse. Subjective craving measures and attentional bias to smoking cues were assessed in-lab. All study groups successfully reduced their smoking up to 3 months. Memantine in combination with smoking memory reactivation did not affect any measure of smoking outcome, reactivity or attention capture to smoking cues. Brief exposure to smoking cues with memantine did not appear to weaken these memory traces. These findings could be due to insufficient reconsolidation blockade by memantine or failure of exposure to smoking stimuli to destabilise smoking memories. Research assessing the treatment potential of reconsolidation blockade in human addicts should focus on identification of tolerable drugs that reliably block reward memory reconsolidation and retrieval procedures that reliably destabilise strongly trained memories. |
Labor incentive and performance of the industrial firm: A case study of Bangladeshi RMG industry | Bangladesh is a labor rich country and an ideal place for the Readymade Garment (RMG) industry that uses labor intensive technology for its production. Labor is an important factor for industrial production and it is truer in garment industry of Bangladesh. Human resource is taken to be an important factor to increase productivity and to improve quality as well as to reduce the costs of the production that is necessary to survive in the competition. There are several issues related to increases the labor productivities and among those, labor incentives is one of the major factor point. This study surveyed almost 36 medium and large scale RMG factories in Bangladesh with a focus on the improvement of productivity of RMG industries. This study finds that, the labor incentive programs increase firm performance and result in reduced delivery delay. Also, this study finds the level of education of the top level managements have an impact on the incentive programs of RMG industries. |
Grasping Unknown Objects in Clutter by Superquadric Representation | In this paper, a quick and efficient method is presented for grasping unknown objects in clutter. The grasping method relies on real-time superquadric (SQ) representation of partial view objects and incomplete object modelling, well suited for unknown symmetric objects in cluttered scenarios which is followed by optimized antipodal grasping. The incomplete object models are processed through a mirroring algorithm that assumes symmetry to first create an approximate complete model and then fit for SQ representation. The grasping algorithm is designed for maximum force balance and stability, taking advantage of the quick retrieval of dimension and surface curvature information from the SQ parameters. The pose of the SQs with respect to the direction of gravity is calculated and used together with the parameters of the SQs and specification of the gripper, to select the best direction of approach and contact points. The SQ fitting method has been tested on custom datasets containing objects in isolation as well as in clutter. The grasping algorithm is evaluated on a PR2 robot and real time results are presented. Initial results indicate that though the method is based on simplistic shape information, it outperforms other learning based grasping algorithms that also work in clutter in terms of time-efficiency and accuracy. |
Credit Card Fraud Detection with Unsupervised Algorithms | According to international credit card organisms such as VISA, there are more and more credit card frauds, both in quantity and in amount. To cure the problem, an anti-fraud project is developed using a combination of two unsupervised algorithms: Principal Component Analysis and SIMPLEKMEANS algorithm. To augment model accuracy, geographic positions of the transaction and of the client are added to traditional studied data, as everybody is fully connected with smartphones nowadays and as such tendency is growing up for a near future. Good results are obtained for proposed model on created test data base by achieving the foreseeing results and getting the classification of possible frauds. |
Stealthy Deception Attacks Against SCADA Systems | SCADA protocols for Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are vulnerable to network attacks such as session hijacking. Hence, research focuses on network anomaly detection based on meta–data (message sizes, timing, command sequence), or on the state values of the physical process. In this work we present a class of semantic network-based attacks against SCADA systems that are undetectable by the above mentioned anomaly detection. After hijacking the communication channels between the Human Machine Interface (HMI) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), our attacks cause the HMI to present a fake view of the industrial process, deceiving the human operator into taking manual actions. Our most advanced attack also manipulates the messages generated by the operator’s actions, reversing their semantic meaning while causing the HMI to present a view that is consistent with the attempted human actions. The attacks are totaly stealthy because the message sizes and timing, the command sequences, and the data values of the ICS’s state all remain legitimate. We implemented and tested several attack scenarios in the test lab of our local electric company, against a real HMI and real PLCs, separated by a commercial-grade firewall. We developed a real-time security assessment tool, that can simultaneously manipulate the communication to multiple PLCs and cause the HMI to display a coherent system–wide fake view. Our tool is configured with message-manipulating rules written in an ICS Attack Markup Language (IAML) we designed. Our semantic attacks all successfully fooled the operator and brought the system to states of blackout and possible equipment damage. |
Impact of virologic breakthrough and HBIG regimen on hepatitis B recurrence after liver transplantation. | The availability of hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) and several oral antiviral therapies has reduced but not eliminated hepatitis B virus (HBV) recurrence. We aimed to determine the rate of HBV recurrence after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) in relation to virologic breakthrough pre-OLT and HBIG regimens post-OLT. Data from the NIH HBV-OLT database were analyzed. A total of 183 patients transplanted between 2001 and 2007 followed for a median of 42 months (range 1-81) post-OLT were studied. At transplant, 29% were hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) (+), 38.5% had HBV DNA > 5 log(10) copies/mL, 74% were receiving antiviral therapy. Twenty-five patients experienced virologic breakthrough before OLT. Post-OLT, 26%, 22%, 40% and 12% of patients received intravenous (IV) high-dose, IV low-dose, intramuscular low-dose and a finite duration of HBIG, respectively as maintenance prophylaxis. All but two patients also received antiviral therapy. Cumulative rates of HBV recurrence at 1 and 5 years were 3% and 9%, respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that listing HBeAg status and HBV DNA level at OLT were the only factors associated with HBV recurrence. In conclusion, low rates of HBV recurrence can be accomplished with all the HBIG regimens used when combined with antiviral therapy including patients with breakthrough pre-OLT as long as rescue therapy is administered pre- and post-OLT. |
GridDS: a hybrid data structure for residue computation in point set matching | Registration of 3D point clouds is a problem that arises in a variety of research areas such as computer vision, computer graphics and computational geometry. This situation causes most papers in the area to focus on solving practical problems by using data structures often developed in theoretical contexts. Consequently, discrepancies arise between asymptotic cost and experimental performance. The point cloud registration or matching problem encompasses many different steps. Among them, the computation of the distance between two point sets (often refereed to as residue computation) is crucial and can be seen as an aggregate of range searching or nearest neighbor searching. In this paper, we aim at providing theoretical analysis and experimental performance of range searching and nearest neighbor data structures applied to 3D point cloud registration. Performance of widely used data structures such as compressed octrees, KDtrees, BDtrees and regular grids is reported. Additionally, we present a new hybrid data structure named GridDS, which combines a regular grid with some preexisting “inner” data structure in order to meet the best asymptotic bounds while also obtaining the best performance. The experimental evaluation in both synthetic and real data demonstrates that the hybrid data structures built using GridDS improve the running times of the single data structures. Thus, as we have studied the performances of the state-of-the-art techniques managing to improve their respective running times thanks to GridDS, this paper presents the best running time for point cloud residue computation up to date. |
Effects of home visits by paraprofessionals and by nurses on children: follow-up of a randomized trial at ages 6 and 9 years. | IMPORTANCE
The Nurse-Family Partnership delivered by nurses has been found to produce long-term effects on maternal and child health in replicated randomized trials. A persistent question is whether paraprofessional home visitors might produce comparable effects.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the impact of prenatal and infancy/toddler home visits by paraprofessionals and by nurses on child development at child ages 6 and 9 years.
DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
Randomized trial in public and private care settings in Denver, Colorado, of 735 low-income women and their first-born children (85% of the mothers were unmarried; 47% were Hispanic, 35% were non-Hispanic white, 15% were African American, and 3% were American Indian/Asian).
INTERVENTIONS
Home visits provided from pregnancy through child age 2 years delivered in one group by paraprofessionals and in the other by nurses.
MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Reports of children's internalizing, externalizing, and total emotional/behavioral problems, and tests of children's language, intelligence, attention, attention dysfunction, visual attention/task switching, working memory, and academic achievement. We hypothesized that program effects on cognitive-related outcomes would be more pronounced among children born to mothers with low psychological resources. We report paraprofessional-control and nurse-control differences with P < .10 given similar effects in a previous trial, earlier effects in this trial, and limited statistical power.
RESULTS
There were no significant paraprofessional effects on emotional/behavioral problems, but paraprofessional-visited children born to mothers with low psychological resources compared with control group counterparts exhibited fewer errors in visual attention/task switching at age 9 years (effect size = -0.30, P = .08). There were no statistically significant paraprofessional effects on other primary outcomes. Nurse-visited children were less likely to be classified as having total emotional/behavioral problems at age 6 years (relative risk [RR] = 0.45, P = .08), internalizing problems at age 9 years (RR = 0.44, P = .08), and dysfunctional attention at age 9 years (RR = 0.34, P = .07). Nurse-visited children born to low-resource mothers compared with control-group counterparts had better receptive language averaged over ages 2, 4, and 6 years (effect size = 0.30, P = .01) and sustained attention averaged over ages 4, 6, and 9 years (effect size = 0.36, P = .006). There were no significant nurse effects on externalizing problems, intellectual functioning, and academic achievement.
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Children born to low-resource mothers visited by paraprofessionals exhibited improvement in visual attention/task switching. Nurse-visited children showed improved behavioral functioning, and those born to low-resource mothers benefited in language and attention but did not improve in intellectual functioning and academic achievement.
TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00438282 and NCT00438594. |
A Review On Various Interference Effects In A MIMO-OFDM System | The performance of a MIMO-OFDM system is severely degraded in presence of RF impairments like phase noise and I/Q imbalance and other interferences like ICI (intercarrier interference) and NBI (narrowband interference). Low-complexity estimation and compensation techniques that can jointly remove the effect of these impairments are highly desirable. In this paper, we present a study of various interference effects in a MIMO-OFDM system and their compensation techniques. |
[Usefulness of the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Assessment Test in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with severe airflow limitation]. | BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the relationship between Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Assessment Test (CAT questionnaire) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) severity assessed by the multidimensional BODE index in patients with severe airflow obstruction (forced expiratory volume in one second [FEV1] post-bronchodilator<50%) in a stable state.
MATERIAL AND METHOD
Prospective observational study (2012). We classified the severity of COPD according to the BODE index in 3 subgroups: mild to moderate COPD (BODE<5 points), severe COPD (BODE 5-6 points) and very severe COPD (BODE ≥ 7 points).
RESULTS
We included 97 patients with a mean age of 67 (8) years, 96% were men. The mean FEV1 was 34.3% (9.8%) and mean BODE index was 4.8 (1.4). The mean CAT score was 20 (7.7). We found no significant differences in CAT score (total or by items) between the 3 groups of BODE assessed.
CONCLUSIONS
In patients with COPD and severe airflow obstruction, the CAT score reflects a moderate to severe impact of illness and does not allow to predict COPD severity assessed by the BODE index. |
On The Architecture Scheduling Problem Of Industry 4.0 | The recently emerged Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) is characterised by the introduction of the new Cyber-Physical System (CPS) concepts and the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. These new collaborating computational entities offer a broad range of opportunity to consider with a different perspective. One of the perennial problems of the manufacturing operation is the scheduling problem of typical job-shop manufacturing systems. Starting from a comparison with the typical architecture of an operating systems scheduler module, we introduce a new manufacturing scheduling architecture. Overcoming the typical Full-Hierarchical configuration defined in the ANSI/ISA 95 in favour of a SemiHeterarchical one, the introduced scheduling architecture leads to a mixture of proactive and reactive approach to the Job-shop Scheduling Problem (JSP), taking advantage from both the common decentralised and the centralised methodology. Keywords— Industry 4.0; Cyber-Physical System (CPS); JobShop Scheduling Problem; Manufacturing System; System of |
Case study on technology and distance in education at the Harvard Business School | For almost a century, the Harvard Business School has used case studies as the basis for experiential learning in both MBA and Executive Education courses. This article presents a case on the school itself: its learning objectives and environment and the challenges of integrating technology into programs that have traditionally relied upon face-to-face, highly interactive classes. The authors summarize findings from interviews with faculty about the use of various types of technology and describe in detail two courses that are a hybrid of online and in-class sessions. The research highlights both the opportunities for technology enhanced education at HBS and the challenges to conducting such programs. |
LogMaster: Mining Event Correlations in Logs of Large-Scale Cluster Systems | This paper presents a set of innovative algorithms and a system, named Log Master, for mining correlations of events that have multiple attributions, i.e., node ID, application ID, event type, and event severity, in logs of large-scale cloud and HPC systems. Different from traditional transactional data, e.g., supermarket purchases, system logs have their unique characteristics, and hence we propose several innovative approaches to mining their correlations. We parse logs into an n-ary sequence where each event is identified by an informative nine-tuple. We propose a set of enhanced apriori-like algorithms for improving sequence mining efficiency, we propose an innovative abstraction-event correlation graphs (ECGs) to represent event correlations, and present an ECGs-based algorithm for fast predicting events. The experimental results on three logs of production cloud and HPC systems, varying from 433490 entries to 4747963 entries, show that our method can predict failures with a high precision and an acceptable recall rates. |
First Sight: A Human Body Outline Labeling System | First Sight, a vision system in labeling the outline of a moving human body, is proposed in this paper. The emphasis of First Sight is on the analysis of motion information gathered solely from the outline of a moving human object. Two main processes are implemented in First Sight. The first process uses a novel technique to extract the outline of a moving human body from an image sequence. The second process, which employs a new human body model, interprets the outline and produces a labeled two-dimensional human body stick figure for each frame of the image sequence. Extensive knowledge of the structure, shape, and posture of the human body is used in the model. The experimental results of applying the technique on unedited image sequences with self-occlusions and missing boundary lines are encouraging. Index Items-Coincidence edge, difference picture, human body, human body model, labeling, model, motion, outline, pose, posture, ribbon, stick figure. |
Personal, social and environmental correlates of physical activity in adults from Curitiba, Brazil. | BACKGROUND
Leisure-time physical activity is a complex behavior influenced by factors at multiple levels.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the associations between intrapersonal, interpersonal, environmental factors and leisure-time walking (LTW) and leisure-time physical activities (LTPA), excluding walking. We also examined the moderating effect of sociodemographic characteristics on these associations.
METHODS
A cross-sectional study was conducted with 1461 adults from Curitiba, Brazil (63.7% women). LTW and LTPA were assessed through the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), and a cutoff point of ≥ 150 min/week was used. Associations were examined through multilevel logistic regressions.
RESULTS
LTW was positively associated with self-efficacy, enjoyment, social support from family and friends, presence of public places for leisure and neighborhood esthetics. LTPA was associated with self-efficacy, enjoyment, social support from family and friends, safety from crime and neighborhood esthetics. Safety from crime was a predictor of LTPA among older adults only.
CONCLUSIONS
Factors at multiple levels were associated with LTW and LTPA. Interventions to promote LTPA would likely benefit from considering personal, social and environmental factors and different levels of influence. |
Integration of Bilinear H∞ Control and Adaptive Inverse Control for Semi-Active Vibration Isolation of Structures | This paper is concerned with efficient integration of bilinear H∞ control and adaptive inverse control to attain vibration isolation of structure installed with a semi-active MR damper in which its damping force is controllable by input voltage. The structure with MR damper is expressed by a bilinear dynamic equation. The role of the bilinear H∞ controller is to provide the desired damping force, while the role of the adaptive inverse controller is to compensate the nonlinearity of MR damper by generating the input voltage so that the actual damping force can track the desired damping force. A new model of MR damper is also given and then the input voltage can be analytically calculated to generate the specified damping force. Simulation and experimental results validated the effectiveness of the proposed model-based integrated control approach in vibration isolation of multistory structures. |
Person-to-Person Transmission of Nipah Virus in a Bangladeshi Community | An encephalitis outbreak was investigated in Faridpur District, Bangladesh, in April-May 2004 to determine the cause of the outbreak and risk factors for disease. Biologic specimens were tested for Nipah virus. Surfaces were evaluated for Nipah virus contamination by using reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR). Thirty-six cases of Nipah virus illness were identified; 75% of case-patients died. Multiple peaks of illness occurred, and 33 case-patients had close contact with another Nipah virus patient before their illness. Results from a case-control study showed that contact with 1 patient carried the highest risk for infection (odds ratio 6.7, 95% confidence interval 2.9-16.8, p < 0.001). RT-PCR testing of environmental samples confirmed Nipah virus contamination of hospital surfaces. This investigation provides evidence for person-to-person transmission of Nipah virus. Capacity for person-to-person transmission increases the potential for wider spread of this highly lethal pathogen and highlights the need for infection control strategies for resource-poor settings. |
Your Place or Mine? On the Residence Choice of Young Couples in Norway | Norwegian registry data are used to investigate the location decisions of a full population cohort of young adults as they complete their education, establish separate households, and form their own families. We find that the labor market opportunities and family ties of both partners affect these location choices. Surprisingly, married men live significantly closer to their own parents than do married women, even if they have children, and this difference cannot be explained by differences in observed characteristics. The principal source of excess female distance from parents in this population is the relatively low mobility of men without a college degree, particularly in rural areas. Despite evidence that intergenerational resource flows, such as childcare and eldercare, are particularly important between women and their parents, the family connections of husbands appear to dominate the location decisions of less-educated married couples. |
Genetics and Marker-assisted Selection of the Chemotype in Cannabis sativa L. | Cannabis sativa is an interesting crop for several industrial uses, but the legislations in Europe and USA require a tight control of cannabinoid type and content for cultivation and subsidies release. Therefore, cannabinoid survey by gas chromatography of materials under selection is an important step in hemp breeding. In this paper, a number of Cannabis accessions were examined for their cannabinoid composition. Their absolute and relative content was examined, and results are discussed in the light of both the current genetic model for cannabinoid’s inheritance, and the legislation’s requirements. In addition, the effectiveness of two different types of markers associated to the locus determining the chemotype in Cannabis was evaluated and discussed, as possible tools in marker-assisted selection in hemp, but also for possible applications in the forensic and pharmaceutical fields. |
A study on the selection of DMARDs for the combination therapy with adalimumab. | We evaluated whether or not the effect of adalimumab (ADA) in combination with the disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) other than methotrexate (MTX) is comparable to the ADA+MTX therapy for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). A total of 216 patients with active RA at Kohnan Kakogawa Hospital and Kobe University Hospital were enrolled. Clinical and functional outcomes were compared among 4 groups, ADA alone (A group), ADA + MTX (B group), ADA + MTX + other DMARDs (C group), and ADA + other DMARDs (D group), and the retention rates of ADA were evaluated with or without MTX. CRP was significantly decreased from initial measurement at 1 month in all 4 groups, but the continuous efficacy with the statistical significance at all measurement points were observed only in combination with MTX (P<0.05), which was reflected by significantly higher retention rates. Similarly, the disease activities were improved, and particularly the remission rates (DAS28-CRP < 2.3) of A, B and C groups (>42.9%) were higher than that of D group (29.4%) at 2 year. An index of patients' basic activities of daily living, M-HAQ score of A, B and C groups was also better than that of D group. While, looking at the mean changes of M-HAQ from the baseline at 2 years, potential effect of other DMARDs on M-HAQ was also suggested. The results show that ADA + MTX therapy is significantly superior than ADA + other DMARDs in ameliorating RA. |
X-Band SIW cavity-backed patch antenna for radar applications | A Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) cavity-backed microstrip patch antenna for radar applications operating in X Band is designed. In order to increase the bandwidth, the SIW technology is used to build a circular cavity which surrounds a modified rectangular patch. The modified patch has truncated corners and two cuts in the lateral sides. Accurate electromagnetic investigation has been performed using CST Microwave Studio© in terms of radiation pattern, bandwidth, and matching. The prototype employs a Taconic RF-35 substrate with εr= 3.5 and thickness of 1.52 mm. A good agreement between simulations and experiments is obtained. The proposed antenna is a promising candidate for a low-cost implementation of radar antenna arrays. |
Role of Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria in Agricultural Sustainability—A Review | Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) shows an important role in the sustainable agriculture industry. The increasing demand for crop production with a significant reduction of synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides use is a big challenge nowadays. The use of PGPR has been proven to be an environmentally sound way of increasing crop yields by facilitating plant growth through either a direct or indirect mechanism. The mechanisms of PGPR include regulating hormonal and nutritional balance, inducing resistance against plant pathogens, and solubilizing nutrients for easy uptake by plants. In addition, PGPR show synergistic and antagonistic interactions with microorganisms within the rhizosphere and beyond in bulk soil, which indirectly boosts plant growth rate. There are many bacteria species that act as PGPR, described in the literature as successful for improving plant growth. However, there is a gap between the mode of action (mechanism) of the PGPR for plant growth and the role of the PGPR as biofertilizer-thus the importance of nano-encapsulation technology in improving the efficacy of PGPR. Hence, this review bridges the gap mentioned and summarizes the mechanism of PGPR as a biofertilizer for agricultural sustainability. |
Analysis of a ferrofluid core LVDT displacement sensor | In this work, we present the analysis of a Linear Variable Differential Transformer (LVDT), which movable core is an encapsulated ferrofluid. A ferrofluid is a ferromagnetic nanoparticles composed fluid, which physical properties, including geometry, vary when it is under the influence magnetic field. Our proposed analysis is on the performance of a ferrofluid core LVDT, based in the fact that as the ferrofluid core moves between the magnetic fields generated in the coils of the LVDT, the core geometry varies. A sensibility and linearity comparison between a conventional LVDT and the ferrofluid core LVDT is presented, along with three different quantities of encapsulated ferrofluid inside the ferrofluid cores. The results of this work will be further used in order to obtain industrial grade sensors and actuators. |
An Asynchronous Parallel Stochastic Coordinate Descent Algorithm | We describe an asynchronous parallel stochastic coordinate descent algorithm for minimizing smooth unconstrained or separably constrained functions. The method achieves a linear convergence rate on functions that satisfy an essential strong convexity property and a sublinear rate (1/K) on general convex functions. Near-linear speedup on a multicore system can be expected if the number of processors is O(n) in unconstrained optimization and O(n) in the separable-constrained case, where n is the number of variables. We describe results from implementation on 40-core processors. |
Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics. | A substantial school in the philosophy of science identifies Bayesian inference with inductive inference and even rationality as such, and seems to be strengthened by the rise and practical success of Bayesian statistics. We argue that the most successful forms of Bayesian statistics do not actually support that particular philosophy but rather accord much better with sophisticated forms of hypothetico-deductivism. We examine the actual role played by prior distributions in Bayesian models, and the crucial aspects of model checking and model revision, which fall outside the scope of Bayesian confirmation theory. We draw on the literature on the consistency of Bayesian updating and also on our experience of applied work in social science. Clarity about these matters should benefit not just philosophy of science, but also statistical practice. At best, the inductivist view has encouraged researchers to fit and compare models without checking them; at worst, theorists have actively discouraged practitioners from performing model checking because it does not fit into their framework. |
Camera Model Identification Based on the Heteroscedastic Noise Model | The goal of this paper is to design a statistical test for the camera model identification problem. The approach is based on the heteroscedastic noise model, which more accurately describes a natural raw image. This model is characterized by only two parameters, which are considered as unique fingerprint to identify camera models. The camera model identification problem is cast in the framework of hypothesis testing theory. In an ideal context where all model parameters are perfectly known, the likelihood ratio test (LRT) is presented and its performances are theoretically established. For a practical use, two generalized LRTs are designed to deal with unknown model parameters so that they can meet a prescribed false alarm probability while ensuring a high detection performance. Numerical results on simulated images and real natural raw images highlight the relevance of the proposed approach. |
Harmonic winding factors and MMF analysis for five-phase fractional-slot concentrated winding PMSM | To enhance torque density by harmonic current injection, optimal slot/pole combinations for five-phase permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM) with fractional-slot concentrated windings (FSCW) are chosen. The synchronous and the third harmonic winding factors are calculated for a series of slot/pole combinations. Two five-phase PMSM, with general FSCW (GFSCW) and modular stator and FSCW (MFSCW), are analyzed and compared in detail, including the stator structures, star of slots diagrams, and MMF harmonic analysis based on the winding function theory. The analytical results are verified by finite element method, the torque characteristics and phase back-EMF are also taken into considerations. Results show that the MFSCW PMSM can produce higher average torque, while characterized by more MMF harmonic contents and larger ripple torque. |
A local mean-based nonparametric classifier | A considerable amount of effort has been devoted to design a classifier in practical situations. In this paper, a simple nonparametric classifier based on the local mean vectors is proposed. The proposed classifier is compared with the 1-NN, k-NN, Euclidean distance (ED), Parzen, and artificial neural network (ANN) classifiers in terms of the error rate on the unknown patterns, particularly in small training sample size situations. Experimental results show that the proposed classifier is promising even in practical situations. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media? | There is an ongoing debate over the activities of brands and companies in social media. Some researchers believe social media provide a unique opportunity for brands to foster their relationships with customers, while others believe the contrary. Taking the perspective of the brand community building plus the brand trust and loyalty literatures, our goal is to show how brand communities based on social media influence elements of the customer centric model (i.e., the relationships among focal customer and brand, product, company, and other customers) and brand loyalty. A survey-based empirical study with 441 respondents was conducted. The results of structural equation modeling show that brand communities established on social media have positive effects on customer/product, customer/brand, customer/company and customer/other customers relationships, which in turn have positive effects on brand trust, and trust has positive effects on brand loyalty. We find that brand trust has a fully mediating role in converting the effects of enhanced relationships in brand community to brand loyalty. The implications for marketing practice and future research are discussed. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Pressure-Activated Electrical Interconnection During Micro-Transfer-Printing | Sharp electrically conductive structures integrated into micro-transfer-print compatible components provide an approach to forming electrically interconnected systems during the assembly procedure. Silicon micromachining techniques are used to fabricate print-compatible components with integrated, electrically conductive, pressure-concentrating structures. The geometry of the structures allow them to penetrate a polymer receiving layer during the elastomer stamp printing operation, and reflow of the polymer following the transfer completes the electrical interconnection when capillary action forces the gold-coated pressure-concentrator into a metal landing site. Experimental results and finite element simulations support a discussion of the mechanics of the interconnection. |
A Meta-analysis of the Effectiveness of Intervention Programs Designed to Support Autonomy | The twofold purpose of the present study was, first, to determine whether training intervention programs designed to help people support the autonomy of others are effective and, second, to identify the set of conditions that allowed these interventions to be most effective. A meta-analysis of the findings from 19 studies with 20 effect sizes showed that the training programs were, overall, effective with a weighted effect size of 0.63. Moderator analyses of the overall effect size showed that the relatively more effective intervention programs were structured in ways that trained multiple elements of autonomy support and were presented in relatively brief (1–3 h) sessions in a laboratory training setting that focused on skill-based activities and utilized multiple types of media to deliver its content. Furthermore, relatively effective intervention programs were offered to teachers (rather than to other professionals), trainees (rather than to experienced professionals), and individuals with an autonomy (rather than a control) causality orientation. Though the small number of included studies warrants caution, results generally affirmed the effectiveness of autonomy-supportive training programs and identified the conditions under which future programs can be designed to be highly effective. |
Cultivation, Genetic, Ethnopharmacology, Phytochemistry and Pharmacology of Moringa oleifera Leaves: An Overview | Moringa oleifera is an interesting plant for its use in bioactive compounds. In this manuscript, we review studies concerning the cultivation and production of moringa along with genetic diversity among different accessions and populations. Different methods of propagation, establishment and cultivation are discussed. Moringa oleifera shows diversity in many characters and extensive morphological variability, which may provide a resource for its improvement. Great genetic variability is present in the natural and cultivated accessions, but no collection of cultivated and wild accessions currently exists. A germplasm bank encompassing the genetic variability present in Moringa is needed to perform breeding programmes and develop elite varieties adapted to local conditions. Alimentary and medicinal uses of moringa are reviewed, alongside the production of biodiesel. Finally, being that the leaves are the most used part of the plant, their contents in terms of bioactive compounds and their pharmacological properties are discussed. Many studies conducted on cell lines and animals seem concordant in their support for these properties. However, there are still too few studies on humans to recommend Moringa leaves as medication in the prevention or treatment of diseases. Therefore, further studies on humans are recommended. |
Deep Knowledge Tracing | Knowledge tracing—where a machine models the knowledge of a student as they interact with coursework—is a well established problem in computer supported education. Though effectively modeling student knowledge would have high educational impact, the task has many inherent challenges. In this paper we explore the utility of using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) to model student learning. The RNN family of models have important advantages over previous methods in that they do not require the explicit encoding of human domain knowledge, and can capture more complex representations of student knowledge. Using neural networks results in substantial improvements in prediction performance on a range of knowledge tracing datasets. Moreover the learned model can be used for intelligent curriculum design and allows straightforward interpretation and discovery of structure in student tasks. These results suggest a promising new line of research for knowledge tracing and an exemplary application task for RNNs. |
OpenFace 2.0: Facial Behavior Analysis Toolkit | Over the past few years, there has been an increased interest in automatic facial behavior analysis and understanding. We present OpenFace 2.0 - a tool intended for computer vision and machine learning researchers, affective computing community and people interested in building interactive applications based on facial behavior analysis. OpenFace 2.0 is an extension of OpenFace toolkit and is capable of more accurate facial landmark detection, head pose estimation, facial action unit recognition, and eye-gaze estimation. The computer vision algorithms which represent the core of OpenFace 2.0 demonstrate state-of-the-art results in all of the above mentioned tasks. Furthermore, our tool is capable of real-time performance and is able to run from a simple webcam without any specialist hardware. Finally, unlike a lot of modern approaches or toolkits, OpenFace 2.0 source code for training models and running them is freely available for research purposes. |
The Spatial Dynamic Between Established Firms and Entrants | The research uses 377 firms that filed initial public offerings from 1990 to 1993 as the basis for existing firms and follows their financial performance from 1990 to 2004. In the first year of a new firm’s existence, before the entrant has time to contribute to positive local effects, its entry is more likely to hurt the financial performance of existing firms. By the third year after entry, however, the effect on the financial performance of existing firms is positive. In the short term, entrants are foes and in the long term, entrants are friends. |
Demand for long acting and permanent methods of contraceptives and factors for non-use among married women of Goba Town, Bale Zone, South East Ethiopia | BACKGROUND
Contraceptive use including short acting, long acting and permanent methods positively influence the socio-economic development of a nation by allowing families to space and limit their family size to their economic capacity. Demand for LAPMs of contraception as detrmined by utilization and unmet need for LAPMs of contraception can provide realiable information for providers.
OBJECTIVE
To determine the utilization of long acting and permanent contraception and its associated factors among married women of Goba town, South East Ethiopia.
METHODS
A cross sectional community based study was conducted among 734 systematically selected married women of reproductive age in Goba town in September/ 2009. A structured and pretested, interview questionaire was used to collect data on socio-demographic, behavioral factors and data related to demand for LAPMs of contraception. Data were analyzed using EPI INFO and SPSS version 16.
RESULT
The demand for Long Acting and Permanent Methods (LAPMs) of contraception was 18.1%. Utilization of LAPMs of contraception in the town was 64 (8.7%) and the unmet need for LAPMs was 69 (9.4%). Information on LAPMs in the town was 636 (86.6%). Media (radio and television) was the major sources of information 641 (87.3%). The use of LAPMs was significatly associated with ever use AOR[17.43, 95% CI:9.19, 33.03], number of times discussions made on methods AOR[4.6, 95% CI: 1.72,12.17] and main decider of using methods AOR[ 2.2, 95% CI:1.03, 4.65]. It was not associated with socio-demographic variables.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
The utilization of LAPMs in the town was less although higher than the Ethiopian demographic and health survey 2005 result. Moreover, there was a considerable unmet need. Increase the method mix of LAPMs by incorporating varaies of implnats in order to increase utilization. Proper counseling of client and partners discussion were some of the recommendation forwarded. |
Evolutionary and ecological genomics of Arabidopsis. | Why are some plants self-pollinating? What determines the timing of flowering and germination? Why do resistant and susceptible alleles of pathogen-resistant genes coexist in populations? These are just a few questions traditionally asked in the domain of ecology and evolutionary biology, and |
Artificial Intelligence in the NASA Volcano Sensorweb : Over a Decade in Operations | Volcanic activity can occur with little or no warning. Increasing numbers of space borne assets can enable coordinated measurements of volcanic events to enhance both scientific study and hazard response. We describe the use of space and ground measurements to target further measurements as part of a worldwide volcano monitoring system. We utilize a number of alert systems including the MODVOLC, GOESVOLC, US Air Force Weather Advisory, and Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) alert systems. Additionally we use in-situ data from ground instrumentation at a number of volcanic sites, including Iceland. Artificial Intelligence Software plays a key role in the Volcano Sensorweb. First, several in-situ volcano monitoring networks use “intelligent” data interpretation software to trigger alerts that can then be used to allocate network resources, notify human agents, and even task space observations. Second, the Earth Observing One (EO-1) spacecraft uses Artificial Intelligence Software to automatically task the spacecraft to execute observations. Third, EO-1 also interprets thermal data onboard to allow for faster notifications of volcanic activity. Finally some data interpretation steps use intelligent software such as Random Decision Forest Methods used to automatically estimate volcanic plume heights in Worldview-2 Imagery. |
Reverse Engineering and Evaluation of Prediction Models for Progression to Type 2 Diabetes: An Application of Machine Learning Using Electronic Health Records. | BACKGROUND
Application of novel machine learning approaches to electronic health record (EHR) data could provide valuable insights into disease processes. We utilized this approach to build predictive models for progression to prediabetes and type 2 diabetes (T2D).
METHODS
Using a novel analytical platform (Reverse Engineering and Forward Simulation [REFS]), we built prediction model ensembles for progression to prediabetes or T2D from an aggregated EHR data sample. REFS relies on a Bayesian scoring algorithm to explore a wide model space, and outputs a distribution of risk estimates from an ensemble of prediction models. We retrospectively followed 24 331 adults for transitions to prediabetes or T2D, 2007-2012. Accuracy of prediction models was assessed using an area under the curve (AUC) statistic, and validated in an independent data set.
RESULTS
Our primary ensemble of models accurately predicted progression to T2D (AUC = 0.76), and was validated out of sample (AUC = 0.78). Models of progression to T2D consisted primarily of established risk factors (blood glucose, blood pressure, triglycerides, hypertension, lipid disorders, socioeconomic factors), whereas models of progression to prediabetes included novel factors (high-density lipoprotein, alanine aminotransferase, C-reactive protein, body temperature; AUC = 0.70).
CONCLUSIONS
We constructed accurate prediction models from EHR data using a hypothesis-free machine learning approach. Identification of established risk factors for T2D serves as proof of concept for this analytical approach, while novel factors selected by REFS represent emerging areas of T2D research. This methodology has potentially valuable downstream applications to personalized medicine and clinical research. |
An Interleaved Totem-Pole Boost Bridgeless Rectifier With Reduced Reverse-Recovery Problems For Power Factor Correction | An interleaved totem-pole boost bridgeless rectifier with reduced reverse-recovery problems for power factor correction is proposed in this paper. The proposed converter consists of two interleaved and intercoupled totem-pole boost bridgeless converter cells. The two cells operate in phase-shift mode. Thus, the input current can be continuous with low ripple. For the individual cells, they operate alternatively in discontinuous current mode and the maximum duty ratio is 50%, which allows shifting the diode current with low di/dt rate to achieve zero-current switching off. Zero-voltage switching is achieved in the MOSFETs under low line input. Furthermore, the merits of totem-pole topology are inherited. The common-mode (CM) noise interference is rather low. And the potential capacity of bidirectional power conversion is retained. In brief, the conduction losses are reduced, reverse-recovery process is improved, and high efficiency is achieved. The interleaved totem-pole cell can also be applied to bidirectional dc/dc converters and ac/dc converters. Finally, an 800 W, 100 kHz experimental prototype was built to verify the theoretical analysis and feasibility of the proposed converter, whose efficiency is above 95.5% at full load under 90 V. |
Ultrasonographic Evaluation of Fetal Humerus Length for Assessment of Gestational Age and Its Comparison with Other Conventional Parameters | Introduction: Ultrasonography is proved to be an ideal imaging method, as it is safe for the mother and fetus. It being a painless, non-invasive, non-ionizing, and relatively inexpensive technique used to evaluate fetal growth parameter many times during pregnancy. Purpose: To estimate the gestational age (GA) with humerus length (HL) and establish the accuracy of it as a reliable indicator for prediction of GA in comparison with other routine parameters. Materials and Methods: Prospective study was performed on 100 normal singleton pregnancies at second and third trimesters. The study was conducted on a gray scale real-time ultrasound scanner using linear and sector transducers to measure the fetal biometrics. After visualizing the heart, the transducer is moved to image the scapular spine located on the dorsal surface to the head of the humerus. A straight measurement was made from the one end of the diaphysis to the other. Results: Biparietal diameter (BPD), head circumference (HC), abdominal circumference (AC), and femur length (FL) were compared with standard charts and scatter graphs were plotted. Coeffi cient of correlation were calculated which were 0.9620, 0.8632, 0.8208, 0.9853 for BPD, HC, AC, and FL, respectively, proving them reliable indicators except for AC . HL measured in the present study was compared with standard nomogram. A statistically signifi cant curvilinear correlation was found between the HL and GA indicating it to be a reliable indicator of GA. Signifi cant coeffi cient of correlation (0.9704) was observed between HL and GA indicating it to be a reliable parameter. Conclusion: The HL was most accurate parameter next to FL in assessing GA. The study also indicates that combination of BPD, HC, AC, FL, HL is more accurate in predicting GA than any single parameter, particularly in the third trimester of pregnancy. HL would contribute to maximum accuracy next to FL amongst all the parameters. |
The VMP1-Beclin 1 interaction regulates autophagy induction | The Vacuole Membrane Protein 1 -VMP1- is a pancreatitis-associated transmembrane protein whose expression triggers autophagy in several human diseases. In the current study, we unveil the mechanism through which this protein induces autophagosome formation in mammalian cells. We show that VMP1 autophagy-related function requires its 20-aminoacid C-terminus hydrophilic domain (VMP1-AtgD). This is achieved through its direct binding to the BH3 motif of Beclin 1 leading to the formation of a complex with the Class III phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) hVps34, a key positive regulator of autophagy, at the site where autophagosomes are generated. This interaction also concomitantly promotes the dissociation of Bcl-2, an autophagy inhibitor, from Beclin 1. Moreover, we show that the VMP1-Beclin 1-hVps34 complex favors the association of Atg16L1 and LC3 with the autophagosomal membranes. Collectively, these findings reveal that VMP1 expression recruits and activates the Class III PI3K complex at the site of autophagosome formation during mammalian autophagy. |
Global report on preterm birth and stillbirth (1 of 7): definitions, description of the burden and opportunities to improve data | INTRODUCTION
This is the first of seven articles from a preterm birth and stillbirth report. Presented here is an overview of the burden, an assessment of the quality of current estimates, review of trends, and recommendations to improve data.
PRETERM BIRTH
Few countries have reliable national preterm birth prevalence data. Globally, an estimated 13 million babies are born before 37 completed weeks of gestation annually. Rates are generally highest in low- and middle-income countries, and increasing in some middle- and high-income countries, particularly the Americas. Preterm birth is the leading direct cause of neonatal death (27%); more than one million preterm newborns die annually. Preterm birth is also the dominant risk factor for neonatal mortality, particularly for deaths due to infections. Long-term impairment is an increasing issue.
STILLBIRTH
Stillbirths are currently not included in Millennium Development Goal tracking and remain invisible in global policies. For international comparisons, stillbirths include late fetal deaths weighing more than 1000g or occurring after 28 weeks gestation. Only about 2% of all stillbirths are counted through vital registration and global estimates are based on household surveys or modelling. Two global estimation exercises reached a similar estimate of around three million annually; 99% occur in low- and middle-income countries. One million stillbirths occur during birth. Global stillbirth cause-of-death estimates are impeded by multiple, complex classification systems.
RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE DATA
(1) increase the capture and quality of pregnancy outcome data through household surveys, the main data source for countries with 75% of the global burden; (2) increase compliance with standard definitions of gestational age and stillbirth in routine data collection systems; (3) strengthen existing data collection mechanisms--especially vital registration and facility data--by instituting a standard death certificate for stillbirth and neonatal death linked to revised International Classification of Diseases coding; (4) validate a simple, standardized classification system for stillbirth cause-of-death; and (5) improve systems and tools to capture acute morbidity and long-term impairment outcomes following preterm birth.
CONCLUSION
Lack of adequate data hampers visibility, effective policies, and research. Immediate opportunities exist to improve data tracking and reduce the burden of preterm birth and stillbirth. |
Gain Improvement of Rectangular Dielectric Resonator Antenna by Engraving Grooves on Its Side Walls | A new technique for increasing the boresight gain of a rectangular dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) operating at its fundamental radiating <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$TE_{111}^y$</tex-math></inline-formula> mode is introduced. The idea is to increase the radiations from the side walls of the DRA compared to that of its top wall by engraving grooves on the side walls. A model based on the array theory is developed to explain the high-gain nature of the antenna. The measured results demonstrate that the proposed antenna achieves an impedance bandwidth of 21% over a band of 3.24–4 GHz, with a maximum gain of 9.6 dB. This is significantly higher with respect to available data in the literature. |
Comparison of haemodynamic responses to dobutamine and salbutamol in cardiogenic shock after acute myocardial infarction. | Nine patients with critically reduced cardiac output after acute myocardial infarction underwent a single cross-over comparison of dobutamine and salbutamol to compare the haemodynamic effects of these drugs, which have, respectively, predominantly beta 1-adrenergic and beta 2-adrenergic agonist activity. The responses were used to select the more appropriate treatment for individual patients. Only relatively small responses were obtained: those with poorest baseline measurements tended to show the least effect. When the results from the series were averaged, dobutamine (250-750 microgram/min) caused a small but progressive increase in cardiac index (1.8 to 2.2 1/min/m2) throughout the dose range. Systemic blood pressure was not increased, and calculated systemic vascular resistance fell from 25 to 19 units. Heart rate rose from 107 to 118 beats/min and stroke index from 17 to 19 ml/beat/m2. Pulmonary artery end-diastolic pressure fell from 18 to 15 mm Hg. Salbutamol (10-40 microgram/min) produced a similar progressive increase in cardiac index, from 1.6 to 2.21/min/m2. Systemic blood pressure was not altered, and systemic vascular resistance fell from 25 to 20 units. Heart rate rose from 105 to 119 beats/min and stroke index from 16 to 19 ml/beat/m2. Pulmonary artery end-diastolic pressure did not fall. Dobutamine and salbutamol have closely similar haemodynamic effects when used in cardiogenic shock after acute myocardial infarction. Both drugs increase cardiac index but heart rate also rises, and the increase in stroke index is relatively small. Mean arterial pressure is altered little by either agent, but dobutamine (in contrast with dopamine) tends to reduce pulmonary artery end-diastolic pressure, which may be beneficial. |
Problem Set # 3 Solutions 1 CS 229 , Autumn 2014 Problem Set # 3 Solutions : Theory & Unsupervised learning | Notes: (1) These questions require thought, but do not require long answers. Please be as concise as possible. (2) If you have a question about this homework, we encourage you to post your question on our Piazza forum, at https://piazza.com/stanford/autumn2016/cs229. (3) If you missed the first lecture or are unfamiliar with the collaboration or honor code policy, please read the policy on Handout #1 (available from the course website) before starting work. (4) For problems that require programming, please include in your submission a printout of your code (with comments) and any figures that you are asked to plot. If you are skipping a question, please include it on your PDF/photo, but leave the question blank and tag it appropriately on Gradescope. This includes extra credit problems. If you are scanning your document by cellphone, please check the Piazza forum for recommended cellphone scanning apps and best practices. 1. [23 points] Uniform convergence You are hired by CNN to help design the sampling procedure for making their electoral predictions for the next presidential election in the (fictitious) country of Elbania. The country of Elbania is organized into states, and there are only two candidates running in this election: One from the Elbanian Democratic party, and another from the Labor Party of Elbania. The plan for making our electorial predictions is as follows: We'll sample m voters from each state, and ask whether they're voting democrat. We'll then publish, for each state, the estimated fraction of democrat voters. In this problem, we'll work out how many voters we need to sample in order to ensure that we get good predictions with high probability. One reasonable goal might be to set m large enough that, with high probability, we obtain uniformly accurate estimates of the fraction of democrat voters in every state. But this might require surveying very many people, which would be prohibitively expensive. So, we're instead going to demand only a slightly lower degree of accuracy. Specifically, we'll say that our prediction for a state is " highly inaccurate " if the estimated fraction of democrat voters differs from the actual fraction of democrat voters within that state by more than a tolerance factor γ. CNN knows that their viewers will tolerate some small number of states' estimates being highly inaccurate; however, their credibility would be damaged if they reported highly inaccurate estimates for too many states. So, rather than … |
Big data analytics for healthcare | Large amounts of heterogeneous medical data have become available in various healthcare organizations (payers, providers, pharmaceuticals). Those data could be an enabling resource for deriving insights for improving care delivery and reducing waste. The enormity and complexity of these datasets present great challenges in analyses and subsequent applications to a practical clinical environment. In this tutorial, we introduce the characteristics and related mining challenges on dealing with big medical data. Many of those insights come from medical informatics community, which is highly related to data mining but focuses on biomedical specifics. We survey various related papers from data mining venues as well as medical informatics venues to share with the audiences key problems and trends in healthcare analytics research, with different applications ranging from clinical text mining, predictive modeling, survival analysis, patient similarity, genetic data analysis, and public health. The tutorial will include several case studies dealing with some of the important healthcare applications. |
Cost-effectiveness of sensor-augmented pump therapy in adults with type 1 diabetes in the United States. | OBJECTIVES
A recent randomized trial demonstrated significant reductions in hemoglobin A(1c) levels with sensor-augmented pump therapy (SAPT) compared with multiple daily injections of insulin (MDI) in type 1 diabetes. We analyzed resource use in the trial and estimated the long-term cost-effectiveness of SAPT from the perspective of the US health care system.
METHODS
We undertook a cost-effectiveness analysis combining estimates from the trial and the literature to populate the previously validated Center for Outcomes Research (CORE) Diabetes Model. Results represent the use of 3-day sensors, as in the trial, and 6-day sensors, approved in most markets but not yet approved in the United States.
RESULTS
Within-trial hospital days, emergency department visits, and outpatient visits did not differ significantly between the treatment groups. Assuming 65% use of 3-day sensors, treatment-related costs in year 1 were an estimated $10,760 for SAPT and $5072 for MDI. Discounted lifetime estimates were $253,493 in direct medical costs and 10.794 quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) for SAPT and $167,170 in direct medical costs and 10.418 QALYs for MDI. For 3-day and 6-day sensors, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios were $229,675 per QALY (95% confidence interval $139,071-$720,865) and $168,104 per QALY (95% confidence interval $102,819-$523,161), respectively. The ratios ranged from $69,837 to $211,113 per QALY with different strategies for incorporating utility benefits resulting from less fear of hypoglycemia with SAPT.
CONCLUSION
Despite superior clinical benefits of SAPT compared with MDI, SAPT does not appear to be economically attractive in the United States for adults with type 1 diabetes in its current state of development. However, further clinical developments reducing disposable costs of the system could significantly improve its economic attractiveness. |
THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO EMOTION | Four major theoretical perspectives on emotion III psychology are described. Examples of the ways in which research on emotion and speech utilize aspects of the various perspectives are presented and a plea is made for students of emotion and speech to consider more self-consciously the place of their research within each of the perspectives. 1. ARE THEORIES OF EMOTION |
Hierarchical vs. flat n-gram-based text categorization: Can we do better? | Hierarchical text categorization (HTC) refers to assigning a text document to one or more most suitable categories from a hierarchical category space. In this paper we present two HTC techniques based on kNN and SVM machine learning techniques for categorization process and byte n-gram based document representation. They are fully language independent and do not require any text preprocessing steps, or any prior information about document content or language. The effectiveness of the presented techniques and their language independence are demonstrated in experiments performed on five tree-structured benchmark category hierarchies that differ in many aspects: Reuters-Hier1, Reuters-Hier2, 15NGHier and 20NGHier in English and TanCorpHier in Chinese. The results obtained are compared with the corresponding flat categorization techniques applied to leaf level categories of the considered hierarchies. While kNN-based flat text categorization produced slightly better results than kNN-based HTC on the largest TanCorpHier and 20NGHier datasets, SVM-based HTC results do not considerably differ from the corresponding flat techniques, due to shallow hierarchies; still, they outperform both kNN-based flat and hierarchical categorization on all corpora except the smallest Reuters-Hier1 and Reuters-Hier2 datasets. Formal evaluation confirmed that the proposed techniques obtained state-of-the-art results. |
Humoral, mucosal, and cell-mediated immunity against vaccine and nonvaccine genotypes after administration of quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine to HIV-infected children. | OBJECTIVES
To characterize the immunogenicity of a quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine (QHPV) in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected children, we studied their immune responses to 3 or 4 doses.
METHODS
HIV-infected children aged 7-12 years with a CD4 cell percentage of ≥15% of lymphocytes, received 3 doses of QHPV with or without a fourth dose after 72 weeks. Type-specific and cross-reactive antibodies and cell-mediated immunity were measured.
RESULTS
Type-specific antibodies to HPV6, 11, and 16 were detected in 100% and ≥94% of children at 4 and 72 weeks, respectively, after the third QHPV dose. Corresponding numbers for HPV18 were 97% and 76%, respectively. A fourth QHPV dose increased seropositivity to ≥96% for all vaccine genotypes. Four weeks after the third QHPV dose, 67% of vaccinees seroconverted to HPV31, an HPV16-related genotype not in the vaccine; 69% and 39% of vaccinees developed mucosal HPV16 and 18 immunoglobulin G antibodies, respectively; and 60% and 52% of vaccinees developed cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) for HPV16 and 31, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS
Three QHPV doses generated robust and persistent antibodies to HPV6, 11, and 16 but comparatively weaker responses to HPV18. A fourth dose increased antibodies against all vaccine genotypes in an anamnestic fashion. CTLs and mucosal antibodies against vaccine genotypes, as well as cross-reactive antibodies and CTL against nonvaccine genotypes, were detected. |
Generic Methods for Optimization-Based Modeling | “Energy” models for continuous domains can be applied to many problems, but often suffer from high computational expense in training, due to the need to repeatedly minimize the energy function to high accuracy. This paper considers a modified setting, where the model is trained in terms of results after optimization is truncated to a fixed number of iterations. We derive “backpropagating” versions of gradient descent, heavy-ball and LBFGS. These are simple to use, as they require as input only routines to compute the gradient of the energy with respect to the domain and parameters. Experimental results on denoising and image labeling problems show that learning with truncated optimization greatly reduces computational expense compared to “full” fitting. |
Probabilistic segmentation of white matter lesions in MR imaging | A new method has been developed for fully automated segmentation of white matter lesions (WMLs) in cranial MR imaging. The algorithm uses information from T1-weighted (T1-w), inversion recovery (IR), proton density-weighted (PD), T2-weighted (T2-w) and fluid attenuation inversion recovery (FLAIR) scans. It is based on the K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classification technique that builds a feature space from voxel intensities and spatial information. The technique generates images representing the probability per voxel being part of a WML. By application of thresholds on these probability maps, binary segmentations can be obtained. ROC curves show that the segmentations achieve both high sensitivity and specificity. A similarity index (SI), overlap fraction (OF) and extra fraction (EF) are calculated for additional quantitative analysis of the result. The SI is also used for determination of the optimal probability threshold for generation of the binary segmentation. Using probabilistic equivalents of the SI, OF and EF, the probability maps can be evaluated directly, providing a powerful tool for comparison of different classification results. This method for automated WML segmentation reaches an accuracy that is comparable to methods for multiple sclerosis (MS) lesion segmentation and is suitable for detection of WMLs in large and longitudinal population studies. |
Evolutionary background for stress-coping styles: Relationships between physiological, behavioral, and cognitive traits in non-mammalian vertebrates | Reactions to stress vary between individuals, and physiological and behavioral responses tend to be associated in distinct suites of correlated traits, often termed stress-coping styles. In mammals, individuals exhibiting divergent stress-coping styles also appear to exhibit intrinsic differences in cognitive processing. A connection between physiology, behavior, and cognition was also recently demonstrated in strains of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) selected for consistently high or low cortisol responses to stress. The low-responsive (LR) strain display longer retention of a conditioned response, and tend to show proactive behaviors such as enhanced aggression, social dominance, and rapid resumption of feed intake after stress. Differences in brain monoamine neurochemistry have also been reported in these lines. In comparative studies, experiments with the lizard Anolis carolinensis reveal connections between monoaminergic activity in limbic structures, proactive behavior in novel environments, and the establishment of social status via agonistic behavior. Together these observations suggest that within-species diversity of physiological, behavioral and cognitive correlates of stress responsiveness is maintained by natural selection throughout the vertebrate sub-phylum. |
Using the Output Embedding to Improve Language Models | We study the topmost weight matrix of neural network language models. We show that this matrix constitutes a valid word embedding. When training language models, we recommend tying the input embedding and this output embedding. We analyze the resulting update rules and show that the tied embedding evolves in a more similar way to the output embedding than to the input embedding in the untied model. We also offer a new method of regularizing the output embedding. Our methods lead to a significant reduction in perplexity, as we are able to show on a variety of neural network language models. Finally, we show that weight tying can reduce the size of neural translation models to less than half of their original size without harming their performance. |
Do depression symptoms predict early hypertension incidence in young adults in the CARDIA study? Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults. | BACKGROUND
Hypertension has been linked to several psychological factors, including depression, but the relation between hypertension incidence and depressive symptoms has not been adequately examined.
OBJECTIVE
To determine if depressive symptoms independently predict hypertension incidence.
DESIGN AND SETTING
A prospective, multicenter, epidemiological cohort of young adults (aged 23-35 years at study entry) from the general community without hypertension followed up for 5 years.
SUBJECTS
A sample of 3343 adults from 4 urban areas stratified for race (black and white) from the CARDIA (Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults) study.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Hypertension incidence, which was defined as blood pressure higher than 160/95 mm Hg (assessed on a single occasion) or the use of prescribed antihypertensive medication.
RESULTS
Participants with high scores (> or = 16) on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale were at significant risk for hypertension incidence compared with those with low CES-D scores (< or =7; odds ratio, 2.10; 95% confidence interval, 1.22-3.61) after adjustment for other hypertension risk factors (eg, age, resting systolic blood pressure at the 5-year examination, physical activity, daily alcohol use, parental history of hypertension, education, presence of diabetes mellitus or heart disease, sex, and race) in fixed logistic models. Those with intermediate depressive symptoms (CES-D scores 8-15) were also at significant risk (adjusted odds ratio, 1.78; 95% confidence interval, 1.06-2.98). These associations were significant in blacks alone but were not found in whites, who had a lower hypertension incidence (29 [2%] of 1806) than blacks (89 [6%] of 1537).
CONCLUSIONS
Depressive symptoms were predictive of later hypertension incidence in young adults, and young blacks with depressive symptoms were at high risk of developing hypertension. |
The Internet of Things: A survey | This paper addresses the Internet of Things. Main enabling factor of this promising paradigm is the integration of several technologies and communications solutions. Identification and tracking technologies, wired and wireless sensor and actuator networks, enhanced communication protocols (shared with the Next Generation Internet), and distributed intelligence for smart objects are just the most relevant. As one can easily imagine, any serious contribution to the advance of the Internet of Things must necessarily be the result of synergetic activities conducted in different fields of knowledge, such as telecommunications, informatics, electronics and social science. In such a complex scenario, this survey is directed to those who want to approach this complex discipline and contribute to its development. Different visions of this Internet of Things paradigm are reported and enabling technologies reviewed. What emerges is that still major issues shall be faced by the research community. The most relevant among them are addressed in details. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
Effectiveness of the back school and mckenzie techniques in patients with chronic non-specific low back pain: a protocol of a randomised controlled trial | BACKGROUND
Chronic low back pain is a highly prevalent condition, which is associated with high direct and indirect costs to the society. Although this condition is highly prevalent, it is still extremely difficult to treat. Two potentially useful treatments for patients with chronic low back pain are called the McKenzie and Back School treatment programs. These programs have good biological plausibility, are widely available and have a modest cost. Although these treatments are already available for patients, the evidence that supports their use is largely based on low quality methodological studies. Therefore, a high-quality randomised controlled trial is required to compare, for the first time, the effectiveness of these treatments in patients with chronic low back pain.
METHODS/DESIGN
One hundred and forty-eight patients will be randomly allocated to a four-week treatment program based upon the McKenzie or Back School principles. Clinical outcomes (pain intensity, disability, quality of life, and trunk flexion range of motion) will be obtained at follow-up appointments at 1, 3 and 6 months after randomisation. The data will be collected by an assessor who will be blinded to the group allocation.
DISCUSSION
This will be the first study aimed to compare the McKenzie and Back School approaches in patients with chronic low back pain. The results of this trial may help in the decision-making process of allied health providers for the treatment of chronic low back pain and reduce the health-related costs of this condition.
TRIAL REGISTRATION
ACTRN12610000435088. |
IQA: Visual Question Answering in Interactive Environments | We introduce Interactive Question Answering (IQA), the task of answering questions that require an autonomous agent to interact with a dynamic visual environment. IQA presents the agent with a scene and a question, like: "Are there any apples in the fridge?" The agent must navigate around the scene, acquire visual understanding of scene elements, interact with objects (e.g. open refrigerators) and plan for a series of actions conditioned on the question. Popular reinforcement learning approaches with a single controller perform poorly on IQA owing to the large and diverse state space. We propose the Hierarchical Interactive Memory Network (HIMN), consisting of a factorized set of controllers, allowing the system to operate at multiple levels of temporal abstraction. To evaluate HIMN, we introduce IQUAD V1, a new dataset built upon AI2-THOR [35], a simulated photo-realistic environment of configurable indoor scenes with interactive objects. IQUAD V1 has 75,000 questions, each paired with a unique scene configuration. Our experiments show that our proposed model outperforms popular single controller based methods on IQUAD V1. For sample questions and results, please view our video: https://youtu.be/pXd3C-1jr98. |
Empirical evaluation methods for multiobjective reinforcement learning algorithms | While a number of algorithms for multiobjective reinforcement learning have been proposed, and a small number of applications developed, there has been very little rigorous empirical evaluation of the performance and limitations of these algorithms. This paper proposes standard methods for such empirical evaluation, to act as a foundation for future comparative studies. Two classes of multiobjective reinforcement learning algorithms are identified, and appropriate evaluation metrics and methodologies are proposed for each class. A suite of benchmark problems with known Pareto fronts is described, and future extensions and implementations of this benchmark suite are discussed. The utility of the proposed evaluation methods are demonstrated via an empirical comparison of two example learning algorithms. |
Associations of ADH and ALDH2 gene variation with self report alcohol reactions, consumption and dependence: an integrated analysis. | Alcohol dependence (AD) is a complex disorder with environmental and genetic origins. The role of two genetic variants in ALDH2 and ADH1B in AD risk has been extensively investigated. This study tested for associations between nine polymorphisms in ALDH2 and 41 in the seven ADH genes, and alcohol-related flushing, alcohol use and dependence symptom scores in 4597 Australian twins. The vast majority (4296) had consumed alcohol in the previous year, with 547 meeting DSM-IIIR criteria for AD. There were study-wide significant associations (P<2.3 x 10(-4)) between ADH1B-Arg48His (rs1229984) and flushing and consumption, but only nominally significant associations (P<0.01) with dependence. Individuals carrying the rs1229984 G-allele (48Arg) reported a lower prevalence of flushing after alcohol (P=8.2 x 10(-7)), consumed alcohol on more occasions (P=2.7 x 10(-6)), had a higher maximum number of alcoholic drinks in a single day (P=2.7 x 10(-6)) and a higher overall alcohol consumption (P=8.9 x 10(-8)) in the previous year than those with the less common A-allele (48His). After controlling for rs1229984, an independent association was observed between rs1042026 (ADH1B) and alcohol intake (P=4.7 x 10(-5)) and suggestive associations (P<0.001) between alcohol consumption phenotypes and rs1693482 (ADH1C), rs1230165 (ADH5) and rs3762894 (ADH4). ALDH2 variation was not associated with flushing or alcohol consumption, but was weakly associated with AD measures. These results bridge the gap between DNA sequence variation and alcohol-related behavior, confirming that the ADH1B-Arg48His polymorphism affects both alcohol-related flushing in Europeans and alcohol intake. The absence of study-wide significant effects on AD results from the low P-value required when testing multiple single nucleotide polymorphisms and phenotypes. |
Market basket analysis in a multiple store environment | Market basket analysis (also known as association-rule mining) is a useful method of discovering customer purchasing patterns by extracting associations or co-occurrences from stores’ transactional databases. Because the information obtained from the analysis can be used in forming marketing, sales, service, and operation strategies, it has drawn increased research interest. The existing methods, however, may fail to discover important purchasing patterns in a multi-store environment, because of an implicit assumption that products under consideration are on shelf all the time across all stores. In this paper, we propose a new method to overcome this weakness. Our empirical evaluation shows that the proposed method is computationally efficient, and that it has advantage over the traditional method when stores are diverse in size, product mix changes rapidly over time, and larger numbers of stores and periods are considered. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
A Fully Automatic Crossword Generator | This paper presents a software system that is able to generate crosswords with no human intervention including definition generation and crossword compilation. In particular, the proposed system crawls relevant sources of the Web, extracts definitions from the downloaded pages using state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) techniques and, finally, attempts at compiling a crossword schema with the extracted definitions using a constrain satisfaction programming (CSP) solver. The crossword generator has relevant applications in entertainment, educational and rehabilitation contexts. |
Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Can Fair Trade, Organic, and Specialty Coffees Reduce Small-Scale Farmer Vulnerability in Northern Nicaragua? | — This paper links changing global coffee markets to opportunities and vulnerabilities for sustaining small-scale farmer livelihoods in northern Nicaragua. Changing governance structures, corporate concentration, oversupply, interchangeable commodity grade beans, and low farm gate prices characterize the crisis in conventional coffee markets. In contrast, certified Fair Trade and organic are two alternative forms of specialty coffee trade and production that may offer opportunities for small-scale producers. A research team surveyed 228 farmers to measure the impact of sales on organic and Fair Trade markets. The results suggest that participation in organic and Fair Trade networks reduces farmers’ livelihood vulnerability. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
SVD-Softmax: Fast Softmax Approximation on Large Vocabulary Neural Networks | We propose a fast approximation method of a softmax function with a very large vocabulary using singular value decomposition (SVD). SVD-softmax targets fast and accurate probability estimation of the topmost probable words during inference of neural network language models. The proposed method transforms the weight matrix used in the calculation of the output vector by using SVD. The approximate probability of each word can be estimated with only a small part of the weight matrix by using a few large singular values and the corresponding elements for most of the words. We applied the technique to language modeling and neural machine translation and present a guideline for good approximation. The algorithm requires only approximately 20% of arithmetic operations for an 800K vocabulary case and shows more than a three-fold speedup on a GPU. |
The geometry of learning | Abstract We establish a correspondence between Pavlovian conditioning processes and fractals. The association strength at a training trial corresponds to a point in a disconnected set at a given iteration level. In this way, one can represent a training process as a hopping on a fractal set, instead of the traditional learning curve as a function of the trial. The main advantage of this novel perspective is to provide an elegant classification of associative theories in terms of the geometric features of fractal sets. In particular, the dimension of fractals can measure the efficiency of conditioning models. We illustrate the correspondence with the examples of the Hull, Rescorla–Wagner, and Mackintosh models and show that they are equivalent to a Cantor set. More generally, conditioning programs are described by the geometry of their associated fractal, which gives much more information than just its dimension. We show this in several examples of random fractals and also comment on a possible relation between our formalism and other “fractal” findings in the cognitive literature. |
A Flexible Low-Power 130 nm CMOS Read-Out Circuit With Tunable Sensitivity for Commercial Robotic Resistive Pressure Sensors | This paper presents a flexible and low-power ReadOut Circuit (ROC) with tunable sensitivity, designed to interface a wide range of commercial resistive pressure sensors for robotic applications. The ROC provides contact detection, monitoring small capacitance variations at low pressure (<;100 mbar), and encodes pressure measurement on 8 bit, evaluating resistive variations. Two all-digital circuits implement the conversion of the input resistance and capacitance-to-frequency, exploiting an on-chip ring oscillator as timing reference. A 130 nm RFCMOS prototype (with an active area of 428 × 159 μm2) has a power consumption of 27.2 μW, for VDD 1 V. Using digital control inputs, the ROC allows a wide range tuning of measurement sensitivity (6.7-46.4 mbar/LSB) and adjustable acquisition time (226.6-461.7 μs and 648-890 μs, for contact detection and pressure evaluation, respectively). The read-out time of ~1 ms is compatible with human response after touch. |
An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Financial Fraud Detection under IoT Environment: A Survey and Implementation | Financial fraud under IoT environment refers to the unauthorized use ofmobile transaction usingmobile platform through identity theft or credit card stealing to obtain money fraudulently. Financial fraud under IoT environment is the fast-growing issue through the emergence of smartphone and online transition services. In the real world, a highly accurate process of financial fraud detection under IoT environment is needed since financial fraud causes financial loss. Therefore, we have surveyed financial fraud methods using machine learning and deep learning methodology, mainly from 2016 to 2018, and proposed a process for accurate fraud detection based on the advantages and limitations of each research. Moreover, our approach proposed the overall process of detecting financial fraud based on machine learning and compared with artificial neural networks approach to detect fraud and process large amounts of financial data. To detect financial fraud and process large amounts of financial data, our proposed process includes feature selection, sampling, and applying supervised and unsupervised algorithms. The final model was validated by the actual financial transaction data occurring in Korea, 2015. |
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